


What Might Have Been Lost

by DarkCaustic



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Loss, M/M, torture but not graphic depictions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 13:01:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5091719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkCaustic/pseuds/DarkCaustic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the war, Napoleon fell in love with another soldier. When he died, Napoleon swore he would never love again.</p><p>It doesn't take long for Illya Kuryakin to complicate that promise Napoleon made to himself.</p><p>And further complicate it by going missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I.

**I.**

The first thing Napoleon ever stole was a kit of soft pastels.

Just a dozen of them laid out neat in a small, rectangular box. He’s not sure how the colors were chosen to be in a kit, or what colors are preferable to a given artist, but, well, any color was enough at the time.

The kit had primary colors, of course – red, green, blue – and the rest to fill in the gaps: yellow, gray, black, orange, purple, pink, aqua, maroon and that odd shade that is neither green nor yellow. They were all kept safe in a flimsy wooden box – balsa, probably – painted black, and Napoleon had simply slipped it into his jacket, tucked it up against his ribs and strolled out of the shop, pausing to run a finger along the edge of a blank canvas as he went.

Later, he would marvel at how easy it had been. No one had been the wiser. Though he did feel a touch of guilt – there was a war on and the shop owner needed the money without a doubt – but, well.

There were only three colors at war: the drab army green, the brown of the dirt and mud and, of course, the red of blood from bullet holes.

He didn’t feel so guilty taking something hopeful back to the front lines with him.

 

XxX

 

The thing was, Napoleon knew right away how well they would work together. The way each of them had something to offer that was invaluable in their line of work, and that first chase through the streets of East Berlin had only gone to show how evenly matched they were with one another. In fact, Napoleon’s not sure if it hadn’t been for Gaby turning out to be so sharp that they would’ve bested the Russian.

That’s the way it was between the three of them, each of them gifted in a way the other was not.

Gaby so quick on the uptake, good behind the wheel in a way Napoleon never was, and able to command a room in a very different way than he would, but with just as much effect. Sharp as a whip and always a step ahead of their mark.

And Illya.

Illya was a bottle of barely controlled anger laced with explosives, but even that served a purpose on more than one occasion. He was much smarter than he let on and practically a force of nature in a fight. But he could also be gentle – the way he called a frightened old woman _darling_ , or helped Gaby to bed with a twisted ankle, or winced in sympathy the moment before popping Napoleon’s dislocated shoulder back in place. He was far more complex than Napoleon had initially given him credit for.

It didn’t take long after being partnered together that the three of them found easy rhythm with each other, learned each other’s cues and moods and worked through missions with a level of efficiency that Napoleon wouldn’t have believed possible had he not been there to witness it first hand. It was like they’d all found a single axis to spin of off, and together, they kept each other balanced.

Which is precisely why it didn’t take him long at all to realize something was wrong - fifteen minutes, maybe, for the feeling to unfurl in his chest.

He was watching the foot traffic on the road below the balcony of their hotel in Paris, looking down at a narrow street, waiting for Illya to return from a liquor store he’d insisted on visiting since they had the “right” kind of vodka (Napoleon had rolled his eyes at this because in his mind, all vodka was vodka but he knew better than to say that a Russian). They were going to toast another successful mission (Napoleon had learned that Illya rarely drank, and when he did, it was only at the end of a mission), but Napoleon knew Paris like a second home, knew the part of town they were holed up in. He’d let his internal compass map out the roads around them, the handful of routes back to their rooms from the store, the time of day and how the traffic would factor and came up fifteen minutes late. And Illya was never the type to meander, to get sidetracked by things like flowers or bookstores or pretty girls in delicate skirts so…

Napoleon has Gaby on the line in two minutes. She’d been down in the hotel bar making friends with a handsome, British businessman, but politely excused herself when the bartender handed her the phone. And, while Gaby did have a playful side about her, she was never one to humor unfounded fears and was up in Napoleon and Illya’s rooms in five minutes.

The Red Peril was now twenty-two minutes late.

Napoleon can’t tear his eyes off the road below.

“We don’t have any known enemies in Paris right now,” Gaby says, trying for comforting.

“It’s not like him,” Napoleon says, one hand on his gut and trying to keep himself collected. “I think something’s wrong. I can feel it,” he says, aware of how crazy he sounds, sparing a glance at Gaby. The look in her eye is soft but not pitying. She’s not humoring. Which is good, in that it means she believes him, trusts him, but is also bad, because that means something probably did happen to Illya.

“I’ll call Waverly,” Gaby says diplomatically and retreats to the living room.

 

XxX

 

The first time Napoleon thought about kissing Illya was at the tiny, waterside café in Berlin.

It had been just a tiny flash of a thing; a momentary intrusive thought while their respective handlers were explaining the sudden American/Russian team up. Their tussle in the bathroom had made Napoleon itch to know who would win in a fight. And by how much. That thought had somehow bleed over into the image of one of the Russian’s large hands cupping his face, working his jaw open with his fingertips by pressing them into the hinge and kissing him filthy.

The thought had left Napoleon internally a bit ruffled, but that was the thing about being the CIA’s greatest spy – even when he was ruffled, it never showed on the surface.

Instead, he decided to show he’d win the fight in a battle of wits and went about insulting Illya’s parents.

Later, after they’d been working together and for UNCLE for a month, he would remember that day and sit up one long night sick with himself for the things he’d said.

 

XxX

 

The first thing Napoleon ever stole was a set of soft pastels from an art supply store in a town outside of Paris. They were on the move. Advancing the line towards Germany and Napoleon barely had time to swipe it.

 _You can’t afford this,_ he’d said when Napoleon had handed it over to him that night.

Napoleon had simply shrugged.

He’d turned it over in his hands, looked at Napoleon with one eyebrow slightly raised—

 _You didn’t afford this_.

Napoleon leaned back, lit a cigarette. _There’s a war on_ , Napoleon said by way of explanation and divergence.

 

XxX

 

Every time Napoleon finds himself back in Paris, he can’t help thinking about it, about the war, about that man. Relieving all those memories he wishes would be quiet, once and for all.

Sometimes it feels so long ago. Like it’s an immeasurable distance, like he’s drifted out to sea and the shore is long gone.

Sometimes it feels too close- a single pane of glass away. Like if he’s not careful, it’ll shatter and he’ll be right back there.

(Sometimes he wishes it would shatter because there were things worth being back there for--)

Thirty-five minutes Illya’s been past due as Gaby hangs up the phone. She stands dead silent and stock-still in the middle of the sitting room and that is an even _worse_ sign than Illya’s tardiness that something has gone terribly awry.

“Gaby?” Napoleon asks, gently trying to shake her from her stupor.

“Waverly had no intel,” she says. “He had to call in a favor.”

Napoleon’s hands go tight on the wrought iron railing he’s leaning against.

“Apparently the KGB had a mole. One of their own selling secrets to other government agencies.”

The back of Napoleon’s neck goes cold with sweat.

“They’re trying to suss out who the mole is,” she says and Napoleon hears the things she’s not saying.

“They think it’s Illya,” he says what she won’t.

Gaby – normally not the one to beat around the bush – doesn’t meet his eye as she nods.

 

XxX

 

The thing is, Napoleon has had lots of marks back to his room. He has wooed men and women alike and treated each of them – no matter how unpleasant they were – like he genuinely wanted to be with them, there in the moment.

He’s had many marks back to his room and not a one of them ever found a piece of his secret life, his ties to the CIA or UNCLE.

But, naturally, it was Victoria Vinciguerra who uncovered a part of him he never meant to share. An aching, broken part of him that does not belong to the CIA or UNCLE or anyone but himself for that matter.

He’d excused himself to the restroom and returned to find Victoria lounging on the bed in nothing but one of his shirts.

One of his shirts that had been inside his suitcase.

Victoria was not be the first mark to go through Napoleon’s suitcase (he’s not an idiot, he knows villains and civilians alike will snoop given the opportunity) but she is the first to be blatant about it and to question him about her discovery.

“You’re an artist?” she had asked, flipping through the notebook that had been tucked away inside one of his silk shirts.

Napoleon had to stop himself from the sudden angry outburst inside of him: the desire to go across the room and snatch the notebook away from her and chastise her for going through someone else’s belongings.

This reaction, he realized just as suddenly as the feeling washed through him, would not assist in the mission, so instead, he smiled salaciously and crossed the room with a bit of swagger in his step.

“I dabble a bit, from time to time,” he said, “Man’s got to have his hobbies.”

“Well,” Victoria appraised, “Rather good for just a hobby.”

Napoleon gave a self-deprecating shrug. “The life of a starving artist was never really my goal, so I kept it just a hobby.”

He’d then managed to distract her with lingering kisses and delicate touches and after that, he'd kept the notebook hidden safely in the false bottom of his case, alongside his extra gun and the passports of his aliases.

 

XxX

 

When Illya found one of the notebooks, it was a different matter entirely.

He’d left it out. Carelessly. Like a fool. On an end table in their shared apartment in Lisbon. They were on a case that was taking them damn near two months, long and tedious and Napoleon was uncharacteristically tired and he’d left it on the end table by the couch in their living room while he went to take a shower.

When he came out, Illya was standing over it, cup of steaming tea in one hand, the other hand gently folded the cover back on the notebook, flipped through several of the pages without picking it up from where it lay. He looked so thoughtful, his shoulders slightly slumped, his brow furrowed, that Napoleon wasn’t mad. No, it was his mistake this time and not some inherent need to snoop – Illya never went into Napoleon’s room without permission when they had separate rooms and he never touched Napoleon’s belongings unless he’d been asked too.

“Sorry,” Illya said when he caught Napoleon staring at him. “Just curious.”

“It’s all right,” Napoleon replied, voice level.

“Who’d you steal it from?” Illya asked. It wasn’t an accusatory statement, merely curiosity. But it bothered Napoleon nevertheless – that Illya bypassed all other options for Napoleon to have come into possession of such a book and went right for the obvious one.

“Are you saying you don’t believe I did those drawings?”

“I’ve read your handwriting, Cowboy, you can barely form letters, yet flawlessly recreate multiple works of art.”

“I suppose you have a point there,” Napoleon said, crossing the room to pick the book up. “It was a gift,” he said, giving Illya a slightly hard look before tucking it under his arm and returning to his room.

Illya asked no more questions about the notebook.

 

XxX

 

“Waverly wants us to come in,” Gaby says.

Napoleon had gone down to the liquor store, described Illya to the attendant and asked if he’d seen the Russian. He hadn’t. Which meant that Illya was taken on the way to the shop.

Napoleon adds half an hour to the expansive of time the Russian’s been gone.

“Come in?” Napoleon asks in disbelief.

“Back to London,” she says and Napoleon can hear she doesn’t like it. “He wants us to go back to London. To wait it out.”

“ _Wait it out?”_

“Waverly is…,” Gaby swallows so hard she makes a little motion with her head, like she’s trying to choke down the information still. “ _Trusting_ the KGB to clear Illya of all charges.”

“And Waverly also trusts them to keep Illya in one piece while they decide if he’s a traitor or not? Trusts they’ll lend him back to UNCLE after they clear his name?”

“Solo,” Gaby says, her voice low and there is the tiniest quiver in her lip.

That’s one thing he’s always respected about Gaby – she’s got one of the best poker face’s he’s ever seen, but he’s been learning to read her and can tell that she’s as mad as he is, as scared as he is.

Napoleon takes a breath. “So, I hope I’m not going out on a limb with this, but we are ignoring Waverly, yes?”

Gaby glances to the phone, the clock on the wall, the painting over the fireplace.

“This room is not bugged,” Napoleon assures her. “I’ve swept it every day myself, twice, and Illya, well,” he shrugs, “I don’t know how many times Illya swept it a day.”

Gaby still takes a minute, rolling her tongue over her bottom lip and nodding to herself, building up the gusto before she says, “Yes,” with resignation. “We’re ignoring Waverly.”

 

XxX

 

 _I always knew I’d come to Paris,_ he had said. They were walking the war torn streets of the City of Lights. Napoleon was sharing his cigarette ration in exchange for company. The fullness of his feelings for the other man had not set in just yet.

 _Is that so?_ Napoleon had asked.

 _Yeah, always knew I’d be here one day,_ he said with a discouraged sigh _, I assumed it would be to study._

 _Study what?_ Napoleon asked. Any conversation that wasn’t about whether or not they’d make it out of this alive was one to be harbored for that sake alone.

And that boy, that man, that beautiful, stupid man, turned to Napoleon with such a glimmer in his eye that Napoleon would never forget it (as one never should forget the moment their fate was sealed) and said, _Art. I thought I’d come here and study art._

 

XxX

 

The first time Napoleon _knew_ he wanted to kiss Illya was after the fiasco with Uncle Rudi.

Napoleon had never been tortured before. Drugged, yes; captured, hell yes; shot at, threatened, had his cover blown: check, check, check.

Tortured?

Not so much. It was really just pure luck mixed with a dash of charm that had managed to get Napoleon through all of his missions unmolested in that particular fashion. Sheer, stupid luck.

But everyone’s luck runs dry eventually and Uncle Rudi did not fall for Napoleon’s charm, neither did Victoria.

“Shame, to lose an artist such as yourself,” she had said. “You would’ve been a great forger to have on staff.” And then she left Napoleon to his impending doom.

Uncle Rudi was a sort of textbook definition of terrible. Smarmy and pleased with himself for it. Napoleon was really a bit stuck on how he was going to get himself out of it – not to mention the fact that being electrocuted was really the least fun way to spend an afternoon.

He was unspeakably relieved, the sort of relieved he could remember seeing on the faces of liberated war prisoners, when his Russian counterpart quietly slipped into the room.

Illya knocked Rudi out with efficiency, but there was something in the way his hands momentarily curled along the collar of the man’s shirt as he laid him down that spoke to a barely contained violence inside of Illya. That he not only could, but _wanted_ , to crush this man’s throat and was only holding back for Napoleon’s sake. To give Napoleon a say in the man’s fate.

It’s an entirely different sort of electricity that surged, wild and unbidden, through Napoleon’s body at the first touch of Illya’s hands on him. One mixed with relief and disbelief in equal parts that the Russian had come to save him from Gaby’s sadistic uncle.

There was a gentleness to the way Illya handled him that startled Napoleon: firstly in its appearance at all; and secondly in its intensity. The way Illya had knelt down beside him so not to loom as he undid the straps first on Napoleon’s right hand, his dominate hand, of course, to make him feel slightly more secure as he moved to undo the left hand. He was exceedingly careful not to put any pressure on Napoleon, just folded back the straps on Napoleon’s body, freeing him as quickly as he could.

But before Napoleon could jump (or perhaps struggle) to his feet, Illya touched the inside of his wrist with two fingers, looked up at him with a strange softness in his eyes and asked, “Are you all right?”

Napoleon’s mouth was completely dry – being drugged and than tortured will do that to a man – and it took him a moment to come up with the words, “I’ll probably live.”

“Well then,” Illya said, finally standing up himself and offering Napoleon a hand out of the chair.

As soon as he took it, there it was again – the sudden rush of something through him. Something hungry and wanting and awakened by Illya’s touch, Illya’s presence. He wanted Illya to tug a little harder, pull him into the shelter of his large body, place his hands around Napoleon’s back and cradle him close.

The image struck through Napoleon’s mind and he felt his cheeks rise with color for half a moment before he managed to tamper the whole thing down.

He told himself that wasn’t proper, that wasn’t all right, and that he was just confusing the relief of having been saved with desire.

It was a good lie, but even Napoleon knew it was a lie.

 

XxX

 

“They’ll take him back to Russia,” Gaby says.

Napoleon nods, just once. It’s been two hours since Illya’s gone missing. Napoleon can’t stop keeping track in his head. Every moment that Illya is gone means he’ll be just that much harder to _find_.

“If you think someone is a traitor, might as well take them somewhere you have complete jurisdiction over them,” he says.

“Our best course is to get him while they’re moving him. Once they get him into Russia,” she says and shrugs, her body easily conveying all the words she doesn’t want to say, like _he’ll be a lost cause on Soviet soil._

“You’re right. So, we’ll have to think about what would be the best way to get him out of Paris, out of France. The fastest way probably. Shit,” Napoleon says and leaps to his feet. “He’s probably on a plane by now.”

“You think he went quietly?” Gaby asks.

“He would be a fool not to,” Napoleon says. “It would just confirm their suspicions if he kicked up a fuss.”

Gaby’s quiet for a moment and than gets up and goes to her room, comes back with the smaller of her suitcases. “I still have contacts in Germany,” she says.

Napoleon raises an eyebrow at her.

She gives a tiny shrug, like she wants to say _I’m more complicated than you know_ before she explains herself. “Contacts with Russian connections. You don’t have to know _everyone_ as long as you know enough _someones_ ,” she says and Napoleon gives her a small, brief smile.

He regrets any time he ever doubted her.

 

XxX

 

 _My dad told me this story once about his father_ , he had said. They were stretched out on their backs on the first real grass Napoleon could remember seeing for months – not decimated in tank tracks or turned to mud by the seemingly endless rain of Europe (which had, for this one, rare moment, ceased and allowed them to lay down and stare at a sky a shade of blue Napoleon would’ve forgotten it had it not been the same shade of blue as the other man’s eyes--) .

Napoleon had given a hum of agreement to let him know he was listening.

_His grandfather was a boxer. Back in Scotland, before he immigrated over. Not a very good boxer, mind you, but a boxer. He taught my dad some stuff and when he did, he used to—well, let’s just say he’d go hard on my father. Knock him around a bit. Knock him to the ground. But anytime my father went to the ground, my grandfather would tell him that he had to keep fighting, that it was important that if you were gonna lose the match, lose it on your feet. He said, if you’re gonna die, die standing up. But to drive that point home, my grandfather used to yell, ‘Stand back up, because somebody loves you.’_

_He said,_ the man continued. Napoleon turned to look from the sky to him, to the sharp point of his chin, the lovely line of his jaw, the languidness of his limbs that Napoleon never got to see (cause, after all, there was a war on), and listened to him continue his tale. _My father said that that stayed with him, helped him during the Great War. Became a sort of mantra for him. Reminded him to survive so he could go home to the people who loved him. Whenever it got tough, he’d remember that – stand up, because someone loves you. Die on your feet. He said it was what got him through_.

Napoleon let him finish, let the silence wind its way between them like a cat before asking, _Do you ever rely on that? Use it as your mantra?_

 _Sometimes,_ the man replied.

_Does it help?_

_Sometimes_ , he said and then he turned to look back at Napoleon, like there was something he wanted to say and couldn’t.

Napoleon felt it then, heart in his throat and a sudden, tight feeling in his chest as he laid his hand down in the grass, brushed it subtly – so no one else would see – along the other man’s side. He’d smiled, gently, before carefully taking Napoleon’s hand in his own. And they lay like that, awaiting orders to move out, with their hands clasped between them, in the gap between their bodies to save their affection from wandering eyes.

Later, much later, in a drunken stupor on the bathroom floor of a shitty hotel in Naples, Napoleon would remember that conversation and think to himself, _well, at least he did die on his feet_.

It wasn’t as comforting as he’d wished it could’ve been.

(Because no matter how the man you love dies, he is still, in fact, dead.)

 

XxX

 

He wasn’t sure if it wasn’t just an eye for an eye sort of situation that caused Illya to save him.

Being that Napoleon had pulled him from the water when he was motionless – only the night before. But, then again, it was more or less Napoleon’s fault Illya had gone into the water to begin with (but for arguments’ sake, it was Illya’s father’s watch’s fault that they had found the safe and consequently set off the alarm).

But he knew when he was told he might have to kill the Russian that he wouldn’t be able to.

It was the first time he felt truly compromised on a mission. Not like having his cover blown, but realizing there was a reason good enough to die in the field.

It’d been a long time since he felt that way – not since the war, not since the muddy fields of Germany – and it was a sinking, terrible realization.

Because he knew better than to fall in love. Had known, for years now, the consequences of falling in love.

Still. He saved Peril from the water and tried (and failed) to turn his heart to stone.

 

XxX

 

One of Gaby’s contacts in Berlin gives her the address to a house out in the German countryside and no other information.

At first, Napoleon doesn’t trust it. Something about it stinks but he doesn’t have enough pieces to put it together and, besides, he knows he’s compromised so he lets Gaby make the call.

The address is in West Germany, so they won’t have to cross the wall (at least, not yet) and it’s out in a farming village.

Illya has been gone almost thirty-two hours. (A fact that Napoleon is not handling _well_. He didn’t sleep while they waited for Gaby’s contact to get back to her, paced the hotel room and sipped a single glass of scotch – an attempt to calm his nerves without actually impairing himself. It didn’t work and Gaby eventually made him go to bed, if only to keep him from wearing a hole in the floor with his tracks.)

Gaby trusts her contact and asks Napoleon if he has any contacts or better plans for rescuing Illya and when it’s clear he doesn’t, they’re on the next train out of Paris and into Germany.

 

XxX

 

 _No, no_ , he had said around the cigarette in his mouth. _That’s not da Vinci. Here, let me show you._ He slipped a notebook across to Napoleon, pencil lines scattering across the pages, revealing his own artwork intermingled with recreation of famous artists, dead artists. Important artists.

 _You see?_ He asked.

Napoleon couldn’t stop flipping through the pages, the intricacy, the emotion of it. The things he was saying without speaking.

 _Teach me_.

_Teach you what? To draw?_

_No_ , Napoleon said, shaking his head. _I would be terrible at that. No, teach me about art._

_Why?_

_Because you love it, because it’s beautiful, because I know nothing about it and because war is hell. Distract me from our impending doom._

There was a pause in which the other man just looked at him, soaking in Napoleon’s presence, getting drunk off him. Then he scratched a hand through his hair. _All right. I’ll teach you about art._

Napoleon beamed at him.

 

XxX

 

The worst part in all this was that Illya felt the same. Napoleon knew it. That electricity at Illya’s touch when he pulled him out of Rudi’s chair flowed both ways.

Meeting his eye across the aisle when they both were ordered to kill the other and both knew it was an impossibility. Realizing that they had, however begrudgingly, earned each other’s trust and that was not something cast away lightly.

How far they’d both fallen. And Illya would prove himself as incapable of killing Napoleon as Napoleon was of killing him.

Napoleon knew he was lying to himself when he told himself the reasons he couldn’t kill Illya was mere camaraderie. You don’t save someone’s life, have your life saved by them, and then turn around a sink a bullet into the back of their skull. You just don’t. Honor among thieves and spies and all that.

It wouldn’t be till later, till they were alone that he would put a name on it. Several missions down the line, half a dozen hotels in half a dozen cities scattered across Europe. Two months and two days after meeting the Russian, they’d be holed up in an attic apartment in Spain, Napoleon lying on the couch, nursing a sprained wrist and several bruised ribs when he would finally put a name to it. When he would finally look up at Illya – silhouetted against the windows, which were all aglow in the setting sun – and think _I love him._

Followed as quickly by as many curse words as he could come up with because he promised – _promised –_ himself after last time, after the last man he loved had died that he would never love again. That he would just collect art and sleep with beautiful women and never look back.

But it felt as unstoppable as bullets, as unsinkable as the moon. Illya cut off a phone call he was having in very poor Spanish with one of their local contacts and turned around to look at Napoleon, resting his hands on the windowsill and taking him in like a cool drink on a summer day.

Napoleon was pinned under his gaze and waited for it – for Illya to lose his temper. He’d been working with the man long enough that he could feel it coming like a disturbance in the ether.

“You must stop doing stupid things,” Illya said. “You will get yourself killed.”

Napoleon shrugged. “I don’t see how that would be terribly detrimental to you,” he replied.

Illya made a wounded sound in the back of his throat. “It would be detrimental because you are my partner. You are my… friend,” he said, and then looked puzzled like he didn’t know he knew that word.

Napoleon wished he could just _stop existing_ for a moment. Wished he could shake Illya’s gaze off of him, wished he could halt the conversation – suspend it forever – but he couldn’t, and he was just a little too banged up to get up and leave the room without it being an event.

“Friend,” he echoed Illya.

Illya swallowed and then nodded.

“Not many friends in this line of work,” Napoleon commented.

“No,” Illya agreed. “Not many.”

 

XxX

 

The man who greets them in the Germany countryside only has three fingers on his right hand, the wound still fresh enough to be scabbed over. He’s clearly only a few years older than Napoleon but gives off an air of being much older due to his thinning hair and the limp he walks with.

Napoleon soon puts together that the man is ex-KGB. One of Gaby’s Berlin contacts smuggled him over the wall three weeks ago.

Very _recently_ ex-KGB.

“Well,” the man says in heavily accented German. “They cleared my name. I was not the mole.”

He’s shaking a bit as he speaks, unable to help himself, a constant tremor that thrums through his arms. Napoleon doesn’t want to think about what they did to him to make his body behave like that.

“They’ve granted me… My life, I suppose, after accusing me of being unfaithful and discovering that I was never unfaithful to my country. But by the time they determined that, I was too damaged to be of any use to them anymore. So they cut me loose.”

Napoleon doesn’t say anything, lets Gaby do the talking on this one.

“Do you know where they took you?” she asks.

The man nods, looking down at his hand on the table, the missing fingers.

“Can you show me? On a map?”

The man nods again.

Gaby rubs his arm consolingly. “Do you want to show us where they took you?” she asks, finally, her voice soft, knowing asking a man to betray his country – even if his country did take two of his fingers and heaven knows what else – is still a huge thing to ask of someone.

That’s when he meets Gaby’s eye and there’s something cold and fierce in him. It’s the look of someone whose seen combat, whose put their life on the line and lived to tell about it.

“I’ll tell you where they took me and you liberate your friend. Even if he’s not the mole, they will still hurt him,” he says in no uncertain terms. “But promise me this,” he says.

Gaby squeezes his wrist gently. “Anything,” she assures him.

“When you liberate him, do as much damage as you can to those bastards. They killed my zhena. Make them pay.”

Gaby’s face goes stony. “We will tear them apart,” she promises.

 

XxX

 

 _These are my favorites_ , he had said and then passed Napoleon a notebook full to the brim of recreates he’d methodically put together over the past several weeks. Napoleon had seen him drawing, but he had staunchly refused to let Napoleon see what he was drawing. Every time Napoleon had snuck up behind him to peek over his shoulder, he’d lay the notebook down on his chest, say _nah, ah ah, not yet,_ and then distract Napoleon with a kiss (as long as no one was watching, or, at least, as long as no one who cared was watching).

He labeled each one with the original artist and him and Napoleon stretched out on their stomachs in the grass to go through them. Each page, he explained why that piece of art was one of his favorites. What the artist had done, why he had done it, what it meant to him personally.

Napoleon didn’t know he could feel that way, about anyone, but every piece of art made him love the man beside him just that much more and he promised himself – that later, when the war was over and the world was right again – they would go to Paris, or wherever else they needed to go, to see each and every one of those works of art.

 

XxX

 

Illya kissed him in Amsterdam.

Napoleon – no stranger to flirting with whoever will get him what he wants – had spent all night tucked into a corner booth of a fairly liberal nightclub necking with the playboy son of a powerful arms dealer. He was too young for Napoleon’s taste – barely into his twenties – and his frame was too narrow for Napoleon’s liking (he wouldn’t have been a challenge for Napoleon to hold down at all). But, he was going to get Napoleon access to his father’s house (and consequently his father’s office, where Napoleon could then track who he was selling to).

Afterwards, in the safe house Waverly had set up for them overlooking one of Amsterdam’s many canals, Illya had entered Napoleon’s room without knocking and waited for him to come out of the bathroom.

This behavior wasn’t a wholly uncommon occurrence but not a particularly common one either, that gray area of neither alarming nor ordinary.

Napoleon exited the bathroom with his hair still dripping and rubbing idly at the start of a hickey on his neck. “I’m going to have to borrow Gaby’s foundation – that kid left a mark,” he said with disgust.

Illya said nothing, quietly watching Napoleon from the sofa.  

“You all right there, Peril?” Napoleon asked, running his hand over the bruise again, fixating on it in the decorative mirror hung on the wall.

“Yes, fine,” Illya clipped off.

Napoleon turned around. “Don’t sound fine.”

“I did not know you would be so bold,” Illya said.

“Bold?”

“You kissed man, went back to his house.”

“All part of the mission, Peril.”

“Is that all?” Illya asked, inexplicably furious. “You only kiss men on missions?”

“Does it matter? I know it’s… looked down on in Russia. Illegal.”

“Illegal in America too,” Illya spat back.

Napoleon shrugged. “Yes. I did not deny that, but I’ve also never been exactly law-abiding.”

“So you don’t kiss men only on missions?” Illya asked, his voice lacking its earlier bite but still guarding something.

Napoleon sighed, longsuffering, closed his eyes briefly and asked, “What does it matter?” Opened them again and pinned Illya with a stare. “Are you going to request a transfer if I say no? If I tell you sometimes I kiss men because I like to kiss men? Go to Waverly and demand to be partnered with someone who’s not a queer?”

When Illya got to his feet, Napoleon was sure he was going to get punched. Right in the face too, the way the Russian advanced on him, sharp strides across the room.

Napoleon didn’t shrink from him, but he did back up.

Till his back hit the wall with a muted thump and Illya loomed larger than life over him, breathing deeply, erratically.

“No,” Illya said.

Napoleon will deny to his dying day that he winced when Illya leaned in – but he knows the truth, he was certain the Russian would hurt him. One of Illya’s hands fisted in the robe Napoleon was wearing, tugging him off balance and away from the wall, while his other hand curved – gentle, so gentle – around the back of Napoleon’s neck and then Illya kissed him.

A short, sweet thing. Just a press of his lips, warm and coaxing and than gone again after a moment. But he didn’t let go, just held the American, a few inches away, breathing the same air, caught there like time stood still.

“Peril,” Napoleon said after a beat. His heart – his fucking heart was thundering in his chest, hard and hurting. He felt bruised from the inside out. A graveyard inside of him that Illya was trying to breathe life back into, stir up the flowers of the cruelest month.

“You are captivating, Napoleon,” Illya said, starry-eyed, eclipsing the light of the room.

And for a moment – Napoleon teetered on the edge of being two people at once: Illya’s cowboy, Illya’s friend who would die for him, who loves him more than he knows how to vs. the army boy he was, barely seventeen and covered in the blood of the man he was going to love till the rivers ran dry and the mountains crumbled to dust. And the two of them at war with one another. The things he knew competing for space with the dozens of might-have-beens, all of them tearing holes inside of him.

He could’ve had that. Had Illya.

But he could still hear the gunshot – sharp and clear and world ending –  ringing out from the second story window of a building in a nothingness town in Germany, a lone sniper not letting the war be won even though it was already over – and watching him crumble to his knees and watching him fall face-first into the cobble stone.

Time split, folded back on itself and in his mind’s eye, it was suddenly Illya.

Illya’s face against the road and Illya’s hands pressing lifelessly against the wound and Illya’s blood forming rivulets in the cracks between stones.

Just like that, the world righted itself again and Napoleon was back in the safe house in Amsterdam, pushing Illya away, keeping him at bay with the palm of one hand.

“I thought?” Illya started. His face, his voice, impeccably hurt. An invisible gunshot wound. His hands full of blood.

Napoleon almost took it back. Almost.

Then Illya stepped back, gave Napoleon space and wouldn’t meet his eye as his fists balled up and his face turned red and he apologized. (Napoleon knew they would be paying for another wrecked hotel room that night but there was nothing he could say to calm him after rejecting him.)

“I read wrong,” Illya said. “I’m sorry. I thought you might want… me,” he said it like the idea was so far-fetched that he was ashamed to have thought it.

Napoleon has been responsibly for many people’s pain throughout the years. Fortunately, in his line of work, most of them had deserved it.

Illya, however, does not, and Napoleon can’t keep them straight – the dead boy in Germany and his handsome, Russian partner with his plush, sweet mouth.

Napoleon took a moment to decide on a course of action – didn’t like any of the one’s available to him and so picked the one of least resistance.

When he finally replied, his voice wasn’t its usual smoothness, usual bravado, usual command. Instead, it was small and breathy, ghost-like as he admitted,  “I do.”

Illya had some impossible way of looking small that made Napoleon continue, “I do want you.”

Illya twitched a little, caught on the edge of being angry still. “Then why?” he asked and when Napoleon didn’t reply, his face fell as he realized, “There’s someone else.”

It wasn’t a question. It was the definite answer of a man who had been there before. Napoleon could hear it in his voice and hated himself for doing that to Illya, for being the one to inflict him pain.

“Who?” Illya asked. “I never see you with anyone more than once. You never speak of anyone--? You’re always bedding women…,” Then something clicks. “You’re lover is man. The women, they are a cover?”

Napoleon couldn’t speak, only nodded. It was easier to let Illya put it together than to tear open that part of his heart and show off the wounds that always seemed as fresh as the day he got them.

Illya accepted this. “I’m sorry, I didn’t not know or I would not have,” he said with a vague gesture at Napoleon and then turned to go.

But there was a moment in which Napoleon felt helpless – to the loss of his last love, to the feelings he had for Illya, to the world at large, constantly making life choices for him, so, without thinking, he blurt out – “He’s dead.”

Illya paused in the doorway and for a moment, Napoleon wanted to scrap everything, put away his notions of not letting himself get hurt again and take a chance with Illya. Wanted the Russian – the Red Peril – with a vibrant intensity, even though he knew he couldn’t have him, couldn’t keep him. Knew if he did, it would just end bloody like last time because that’s the way the world works.

But he’d never told a soul before. It’d been his life’s biggest secret and Illya was his friend, his partner. Illya cared about him more than anyone had in a long time and if anyone would listen, would be gentle and understanding about what had happened, about how it had hurt, it would be Illya—

Illya stayed frozen in the doorway, motionless for a long moment, face strangely blank and body sniper-still as he took stock of Napoleon.

He said nothing. Didn’t even twitch and after several minutes of that tense silence, Napoleon snapped.

Up and cracked under the weight of it. Of saying his secret out loud and having it meet with _nothing_. It felt worse than revulsion, than rejection. It felt like he had been gutted, hollowed out and told to keep living with nothing inside to keep him standing. He didn’t know what the point was anymore. Thought maybe there wasn’t one. The CIA owned him and the man he loved was dead and Illya just stood there looking at him like he was nothing.

Napoleon leaned back into the wall again, slid down it to rest with his face in his knees.

“I’m sorry,” he said into the fabric of his robe. “I’m sorry,” he said to Illya. “I’m sorry,” he said to the man shot dead in Germany half a lifetime ago.

“Cowboy,” Illya said after a long, silent moment in which Napoleon did not get up off the floor.

A large, warm palm landed on his shoulder and slipped across to the back of his neck. “You’re all right,” Illya said. “Breathe.”

Napoleon didn’t realize that he hadn’t been. His chest burned with the absence of it and he struggled for another moment, suddenly gasping, almost choking. But then Illya rubbed his fingers along the nob at the top of his spine and he worked through it.

“Up,” Illya ordered and hauled Napoleon bodily to his feet before he could follow the command. “You need sleep,” Illya said and marched him over to his bed, dropped him onto it.

Illya helped him get under the blankets, tucked him in like some little kid and Napoleon was too hollowed out to feel embarrassed about it.

“Sleep,” Illya ordered. “You will feel better,” he said, rubbing Napoleon’s shoulder warmly before crossing the room and turning off the light.

But just before he left, Napoleon broke the silence.

“Thomas,” he said. “His name was Thomas.”

Illya had paused in the doorway, looking back at Napoleon – illuminated by the light falling through the open door – and repeated it. “Thomas.” Like he was checking the merits of it, feeling the weight of it. Sizing it up as a single word that contained an entire life. Then he nodded to himself. “That’s a good name,” he appraised solidly, something warm in his otherwise cold voice before saying again, “Go to sleep, Cowboy,” and closing the door behind him.

 

XxX

 

 _You’re a reckless man, Solo_ , Thomas said, breathless into Napoleon’s neck. They’d snuck away, found a dense outcropping of trees on the edge of camp and fooled around to completion.

The war made him feel dead – like he’d descended into the first layer of Hell and the only way out was to cross further into the pit.

But Thomas made him feel alive. Warm, like his bones were thawing and there was some hope to be had for after – after he climbed past the Devil and through to the other side. After the war was over.

 _Here,_ he whispered when they got back into camp, climbing into their respective sleeping bags.

He pushed a leather bound journal into Napoleon’s hands.

_It’s all filled up. You hang onto it._

Napoleon pressed the book to his chest for a moment, looking over at Thomas in the dark, memorizing the outline of his face, his tiny smile, the sharp jut of his chin and cheekbones.

 

XxX

 

“Waverly’s agreed to help,” Gaby says, coming back into the room. They’re in Berlin, checked into a tiny, chic hotel – like the one Napoleon promised to take Gaby to the night they met and never did.

She flops down beside him, obviously tired. Illya’s been gone three days now and they’ve been constantly on the move and putting feelers out into various channels for almost the entirety of those three days.

“He’s not happy about us ignoring him,” she goes on, “But he has agreed to help. Not much though. Just an extraction team.”

“What’s the catch?” Napoleon asks.

“They won’t help us till we hit Germany. We get caught and Waverly knows nothing and you get charged with treason and I go back to East Berlin.”

Napoleon nods, standing with his hands behind his back. “Are those terms acceptable to you?”

“I would’ve gone after him with nothing.”

 

XxX

 

Thomas gave him another notebook – this one had drawings of Napoleon scattered through recreations of famous art, original pieces, portraits of fellow soldiers and a few depictions of some of the things they saw at war.

They liberated a concentration camp a day earlier and an eerie silence had settled over the unit ever since. They’d all seen horrible things in Europe, but this was the worst horror of them all.

But, part of it, Napoleon suspected, was that it also proved they were doing something, their presence wasn’t just sacrificial. The war was just about over and now they had some solid proof to believe it.

In their tent, Thomas rolled closer to Napoleon, pulled their blankets around them and sank his nose into the hollow of Napoleon’s throat.

 _If we’d been here, they would’ve locked us up with them_ , he said into Napoleon’s skin.

Napoleon cradled the back of his head with one, warm hand and tried not to think too hard about it. But every time he closed his eyes he saw their faces, their dirty clothes, yellow stars and pink triangles.

But what he had – Thomas – was some strange blessing of war. That no one blinks twice when you curl up with another man to keep warm on a cold European night.

 

XxX

 

Illya waited one week after the failed kiss in Amsterdam to talk to Napoleon about it.

Well, not about the kiss. That never gets mentioned again.

No, instead he asked Napoleon about Thomas.

They were lying flat on their backs in the crawlspace under an ancient house in rural Italy, waiting for extraction from a sticky situation when Illya cleared his throat and asked, “Thomas – did he have family?”

They were packed so close together that Illya was blurry when Napoleon turned his head to look at him.

At first, he wanted to tell Illya to shut up. To never mention Thomas to him again, to forget that night in Amsterdam and, hell, maybe even forget him the process.

But he remembered why he told Illya – that Illya was his friend and a little bent like him and Thomas was something beautiful that he had never gotten to share with anyone, never told a soul about before.

So he answered Illya.

“He was a middle child. Widowed mother, younger brother, younger sister, older brother who served too. He survived the war,” Napoleon said and didn’t mean for his voice to drop on the last sentence, but, well, Napoleon never got over resenting the cruelty of fate.

Illya made a humming noise in acknowledgement before asking, “Did they have a funeral? For him?”

It was a bit like being punched in the gut, dragging this stuff to the surface again after so long. “Yes, there was a funeral, back in New York, where he was from, where we were both from,” Napoleon said, facing the dusty floorboards above them again.

He listened to Illya shift a little, no doubt getting all kinds of dirt in his hair as he cranes his neck to look at Napoleon.

“Did you go?”

Napoleon shook his head. “I was still at war, and then after the war… well, lets just say it was a few years before I made it Stateside again, if you know what I mean.”

Illya almost let it go there, but after several minutes of silence – just their breath disturbing the cobwebs – he asked, “Did you visit grave?”

Napoleon closed his eyes.

“No.”

Illya never asked why not.

 

XxX

 

The closer to the wall they get, the more apprehensive Gaby looks. The more apprehensive she looks, the more uneasy Napoleon grows.

He grabs her hand between them, squeezing it gently till she looks at him and says, “No matter what happens, I promise, I’ll get you back out again.”

She gives him a forced, watery smile, saying, “You better, Cowboy.”

As soon as she says it, she realizes it’s the wrong thing to say and apologizes immediately.

Napoleon ignores her apology but promises her, “We’re gonna get him out.”

 

XxX

 

They were on a stake out, three weeks after the incident in Amsterdam, laying low in a shoddy hotel in Belfast after a mission went a tiny bit awry in Scotland. Waverly wanted to keep them close in case the situation could be rectified, but not so close they would get caught.

They’d been there two days and Napoleon was getting ready to start climbing the walls when Illya – without looking up from the chess match he was playing against himself –said, “Tell me about Thomas.”

At first, Napoleon thinks that he’s misheard. “Sorry, your accent got the better of me for a moment there, Peril. What did you say?”

Illya looked up then, held Napoleon’s gaze steady and made no mistakes as he said, “Thomas. Tell me about him.”

Napoleon’s kneejerk reaction was to accuse Illya of playing a sick joke on him, but in all the time he’d known the Russian, he had never played a joke on anyone. Which could only mean that he was being sincere and Napoleon wanted, in part, to tell him to go to hell, but, also, part of him fell a little more in love with the Red Peril for it.

Napoleon dropped, defeated, into the chair cattycorner to Illya and said, “He was young, like me. From New York City, like me. An art student.”

“Like you?” Illya asked, without taking his eyes off the chessboard, his careful hands moving pieces slowly and deliberately.

“No. I was no one and I knew nothing about art before Thomas.”

“So you were stationed together?”

Napoleon nodded. “His unit got mostly decimated somewhere in France. He’d been in the war a good six months longer than me. My unit was sent out and picked up the stragglers from his. I guess he took me under his wing, sort of speak, showed me how to survive a warzone without dying.”

“Sounds like a valuable friend,” Illya said.

Napoleon stared at Illya, at the furrow of his brow over his game, the natural curve of his lip, the smoothness of his skin, his long, delicate fingers and felt time slip a little. Felt his heart give out a little.

“He was,” Napoleon agreed, reminding himself that love is a deadly, dangerous thing and he won’t do it to himself again.

He won’t.

 

XxX

 

 _Do you not know how to use them?_ Napoleon had asked, suddenly feeling self-conscious, watching Thomas turn the pastels over one at a time.

Thomas stubbed out his cigarette, exhaled the last of the smoke and said, _Naw, it’s pretty intuitive, just never used them before._

_Well, I figured your art lessons would be easier if everything wasn’t in gray scale._

Thomas laughed. _You’re probably right. Besides, rumor is the Nazis are destroying all the art they can find_ , he says, smacking his notebook. _These might be the only copies left in existence after the war._

He knows Thomas was trying to be lighthearted, but, like most things in war, it’s hard, and Napoleon couldn’t even muster a sympathy chuckle.

Thomas just looked out across the field before them, eyes distant and stormy-blue.

 

XxX

 

Illya has been missing for four days by the time they reach the farmhouse in the Russian countryside the ex-KGB agent with only eight fingers gave them directions to.

It’s definitely the place. Gaby and Napoleon have been lying in the grass, counting the guards coming and going for nearly four hours.

“What if he’s not in there?” Gaby asks the question Napoleon hasn’t been letting himself ask.

 _Then he’ll be in a shallow grave out back if we’re really lucky_ , Napoleon thinks but does not say.

Instead, he checks his gun again and says, “Then we go to Moscow.” _I’ll burn this country to the ground for Illya_ , he thinks.

“With the KGB on our tail?” she asks but she doesn’t sound terribly worried about it.

Napoleon lets the slide click home on his pistol. “I’m sure we can handle it,” he assures her with a bravado smile. “Ready?”

Gaby shakes her head at him but says, “I’m ready.” It feels like they’ve made a suicide pact.

 

XxX

 

It became a habit. Anytime there was a quiet moment between Napoleon and Illya and they’re lives weren’t at stake, he would ask about Thomas.

At first, it felt like pulling himself apart. Tearing his skin off and inviting the starving to look at the wound.

But, somewhere along the way, it became therapeutic. Healing. It wasn’t opening old wounds for the sake of opening them, but to validate them. To know that they were real, that he was real, that what they were to each other was real.

It doesn’t hurt again until the day Illya puts two and two together and the whole of Napoleon’s life feels like a farce.

They were waiting to tail Gaby (who had been on a date with their mark and spent the night at his spacious home) through the streets of Vaduz, Illya behind the driver seat and Napoleon spread out on the backseat, lying prone and out of sight.

“Your private collection,” Illya said, a sudden burst of sound in the car.

Napoleon craned his neck a little to see the Russian but didn’t say anything.

Around them, dawn was cracking along the edges of the world, like cracks in an eggshell, spilling out bright yellow. (Napoleon had always hated eggs.)

“There are pieces you stole, never sold. You have private collection,” Illya said.

Napoleon hummed. “I am neither going to confirm nor deny that. Wouldn’t put it past the CIA to tack a few more years onto my sentence over hearsay.”

Illya did not rise to that bait. Instead, he continued with his original thought. “The commission that brought you down thought you were saving them till price went up.”

Napoleon turned his gaze from Illya’s profile to out the window again. The sky was turning a lovely shade of lilac. He remembered waking up to that color at dawn back during the war; remembered feeling so gracious for it – aside from the stolen pastels packed in Thomas’s things, there was so little color at war and Napoleon was so hungry for it.

“The price was not why you did not sell those pieces,” Illya said.

Napoleon squeezed his eyes shut. Illya had him all figured out.

The CIA might have caught him, but they never _understood_ him. No one had, not since Thomas died in a little town in Germany, but, then, that event had turned him into the man he was, a man Thomas never knew.

“You didn’t sell them because,” Illya started and stopped. At first, Napoleon thought he was waiting for Napoleon to fill in the blank – to own up to the reason – but then he realized it was because Illya was afraid to say it. Like if he didn’t say it, it wouldn’t be true. Not because it was horrific, but because it was painful. So they sat there, for several heartbeats, with the matter hovering in a state between fact and falsehood. He was leaving an opening for Napoleon to deny it, to decide which way to turn the conversation, to twist the truth to make himself feel better.

But Napoleon didn’t pick up the reigns, didn’t sway the conversation another way. Just lay still and quiet in the back seat of the car and watched the sky change hues with the rising sun.

“The art you stole and sold,” Illya finally went on. “Maybe for money, yes, but also distraction. The ones that never reappeared – your private collection.”

Napoleon sighed his defeat, looked at Illya again – he was still facing forward, watching the garage door of the house Gaby was in.

“Something like that,” Napoleon confirmed.

“Thomas’s favorites,” Illya said.

It wasn’t a question. He didn’t need confirmation.

No one knew Napoleon Solo like Illya Kuryakin did.

In the backseat, Napoleon swallowed, felt his face burn hot and looked down at his hands till the sudden urge to cry passed.

 

XxX

 

 _You should join me_ , Thomas had said. They were making headway across Germany. The war was all but over, they could see the end and they were hopeful.

 _Join you?_ Napoleon asked.

 _When this is all over, come back to New York with me. We’ll get a little apartment together. We’ll both get jobs, I’ll work my way through school._ He turned and smiled at Napoleon, wide and bright and said _, You’ll become the live in lover of one of the twentieth centuries most influential artists._

 _Oh? I’ll be your kept man? You think you’ll be able to afford me?_ Napoleon asked.

_Judging by the way you dress and eat these days, I should be able to keep you with my pocket change._

Napoleon shoved him. _I’ll have you know, when this is all over, I’m wearing nothing but designer suits_ _and eating in the finest restaurants._

_I didn’t know you were so fussy. Maybe I’ll have to find someone else, someone less high maintenance._

_You mean cheaper_ , Napoleon said. _And you wouldn’t dare. There’s no one like me. You would go mad from missing me._

_Don’t flatter yourself, Napoleon._

 

XxX

 

Gaby’s using Illya’s gun with the silencer on it, takes out the two guards at the front door while Napoleon picks the lock on the back door.

She’s going to be a distraction so he can find Illya. Gaby’s contact wasn’t as much use about the interior of the house – said he knew he was in a basement, damp and windowless. Knew there were at least a half a dozen men inside, but unable to tell if it was more or not, the same half dozen the whole time or not.

The backdoor opens quietly into a kitchen, where a very fresh-faced KGB agent looks terribly surprised when Napoleon slinks through and gracefully sinks his knife into the boy’s heart with one hand, the other cupped over his mouth to muffle the sound.

He’s never been one to delight in killing – always been too close to the dying to appreciate it as anything more than an act he’s been forced to do – but this time, for a flash of a second, he sees a young, German sniper’s face from a second story window in the face of the young KGB agent as he lays him out on the floor without a sound.

No, there’s no delight in the killing, but there is relief in taking back what’s his.

 

XxX

 

He had to turn Illya down again.

They were in New York – Napoleon’s hometown – nearly ten months after the Amsterdam incident.

Christmas time in New York, nevertheless. It was snowing, picture-perfect and their mission had gone off without a hitch, so Waverly had given them time off through the New Year.

Napoleon asked Illya to stay with him through the holidays. Decided to stay in New York – something he hadn’t done for any length of time since before the war – and give Illya a native’s guide to the city, and maybe see what had or hadn’t changed for himself.

In retrospect, he could see why Illya had taken it as a perfect segue into asking Napoleon to be his lover a second time.

They’d gone to dinner and then spent hours walking the city, taking in the sights at night, until the chill started to get to them and they retired to the spacious suite Napoleon had checked them into (the first time he’s gotten to choose his own hotel in _years_ ).

Napoleon fixed them coffee – Irish – and stood by the window, soaking in the lights of the city while he and Illya talked lightheartedly about their family’s holiday traditions as children. The shots taken at each other in the café in Berlin were long forgotten and they spoke to each other like they both didn’t have private worlds of hurt inside them, stemmed from old wounds that never fully healed.

Napoleon remembers thinking that was what made a good friend – the kind of person who knows when to ignore when you’re hurt and when not to.

But somewhere in the conversation, his second cup of coffee grew cold and Illya joined him at the window and he couldn’t say when Illya’s hand came to rest at the small of his back – but he suddenly realized they were standing so close together. Illya’s face soft in the light of the city, his gaze following the snow that had, of course, just begun to fall.

So, yes, in retrospect, Napoleon could see his mistake but in the moment, he found himself rather blindsided.

Illya squeezed his hip, gently, where his hand was splayed – huge and warm – tipped his head in until his nose brushed tantalizingly along Napoleon’s jaw and asked, “Would you come to bed with me tonight, Cowboy?”

It was like a frozen stone fell through Napoleon’s body – cold and hard and settled in his stomach as the easy grin slipped from his face and he stepped backwards out of Illya’s grasp. Such a fool he had been, letting his guard down like he wasn’t a trained _spy_ , the CIA’s best nonetheless and Illya could just sidle up to him like that.

He shook his head before he could get his voice to work and he looked down at his cold cup of coffee and Irish cream and back to the Russian with his wide, imploring blue eyes. “No, Peril,” he said, his voice feeling distant and removed from him.

Illya set his lips together tight, nodded without looking at Napoleon.

“We’ve been here before, the answer is still no. The answer is always going to be no.”

“Why?” Illya asked.

Napoleon tried not to see the Russian’s hands shaking – the nervous tick before he wrecks something. He remembered fearing that it would come to blows – that they wouldn’t even be able to be partners anymore, yet alone friends.

“You know why,” Napoleon said, setting his cup down on the table by the window in case he needed to ward Illya off.

“Because of Thomas?” Illya bit the words off, they sounded so harsh coming from him, an attack on Napoleon’s person, on his life and all it’s choices.

For a moment, Napoleon regretted everything – regretted confining in Illya, regretted not killing him in Rome instead of giving him back his father’s watch, regretted not taking a shot at him when he was a nameless giant trying to stop Gaby’s car in Berlin with strength alone.

Of course, that gave him a case of severe emotional whiplash, because, all things considered, he was regularly, near-nauseatingly glad he hadn’t killed Illya when he had the chance.

“Because of Thomas,” Napoleon replied, his voice full of resignation.

Illya’s jaw tensed as he swallowed, his hands curled into fists and Napoleon wasn’t sure which way it would go down.

“It’s been almost twenty years since he died,” Illya said.

Napoleon hadn’t been expecting that, felt himself rock against the verbal blow but recovered rather quickly, working a crick out of his neck as he said, “Loss hurts no matter how much time has passed.”

“Would he want this for you?” Illya asked, all hellfire and anger. “For you to deny yourself your wants because he’s dead?”

“I don’t deny myself wants,” Napoleon argued. “I have the finest clothes, a collection of art and the oldest scotch I can find. You are just taking cheap shots because you can’t handle that fact that maybe you’re not one of my wants, Peril. But, I shouldn’t be surprised that bowing out with grace was not something the KGB would be able to teach a lug like you.”

He was _certain_ Illya would hit him that time – or flip another table or something – but refused to let it show. He kept his immaculate posture, his chin held high as he met Illya’s furious eyes.

When Illya stepped in on him, he did not flinch, did not lose ground as the Russian bent slightly to put his lips near Napoleon’s ear again - this time in intimidation rather than seduction.

“Lie to yourself all you want, Napoleon,” he said, “But I’ve seen the way you look at me.”

He backed off then, retreating to his room – where Napoleon expected him to spend the night – instead he emerged moments later, his bag in one hand, his other hand straightening his cap.

Before he left, he turned to Napoleon and said, “If this is what Thomas would want for you, Thomas wasn’t good man.”

He closed the door quietly behind him and Napoleon couldn’t move from where he’d rooted himself for the longest time.

It was the worst Christmas he’d ever had.

 

XxX

 

_What will you tell your family?_

Thomas had scratched his head. His back was to Napoleon, the sun setting in front of him and he looked like he was consumed in holy fire.

 _What will you tell yours?_ He asked over his shoulder, his smile so small and sweet.

Napoleon shook his head. _I asked you first. Besides, didn’t you know, they’re all dead?_

Thomas turned all the way around then. _All of them?_

Napoleon nodded. _My father in an accident in the factory he worked in; my mother not long after, influenza._

 _I’m sorry,_ Thomas said. _No siblings? Aunts? Uncles? Grandparents?_

_No siblings. Grandparents deceased. Aunts and Uncles? If I had any, they were never introduced to me._

Thomas grabbed his hand then, like he was overwhelmed with how solitary Napoleon Solo was in the world, a testimony to loneliness in all its many forms.

_I promise, you won’t have to be alone anymore, Napoleon. When this is all over, we’ll have a life together. No matter what._

Napoleon had given him a brief, solemn smile, cupped his cheek and said _, Don’t make promises we both know you can’t keep._

But Thomas had kissed his hand and said _, I’ll keep it. I swear, on my life, I swear._

 

XxX

 

Illya had spent months helping Gaby become a better shot and if the ruckus Napoleon could hear happening in the front room was any indication – his work was paying off.  

From the kitchen, there is a small hallway that leads to two bedrooms, a bathroom and a closet at the end of the hall.

Gaby meets him there, a knick on her cheek and someone else’s blood on her wrist. Her hair is a total mess, like someone got a hand in it at one point and Napoleon raises an eyebrow to her.

“What?” she says. He shakes his head and motions to the hall.

She nods and the two fall in step together. The first bedroom is clear, the second has two men lying in wait.

Napoleon almost eats a shot to the chest, barely managing to swing sideways so it grazes his arm instead, tearing his sleeve apart and leaving a bloody gash in it’s wake. It slows him down, but doesn’t stop him from drawing a bead on the assailant and downing the man with a shot to the throat.

He makes a terrible gargling noise as he crumples and then Napoleon and Gaby both have the second one fixed in their sights.

He’s a coward, or, perhaps, simply not a fool. Holds his hands up, gun pointed to the ceiling and finger off the trigger. “Basement,” he says in very rough English. “Kuryakin, basement,” and he motions towards the carpet covering the center of the room.

Napoleon nods, not quite taking his eyes off the man as he flips back the rug and reveals a trap door.

“Go,” Gaby says, keeping her gun trained on the man and nodding to Napoleon. They’re not going to kill the man after he gave up, but they’re not going trust him either.

Napoleon flings back the door and stares down into the dark for a moment before descending.

 He should’ve known it was a trap.

 

XxX

 

The first piece of art Napoleon stole was a complete impulse.

Thomas had been dead two months, his body shipped back to the states. Napoleon kept his notebooks – both because he knew he’d never have anything else of Thomas again and because there were some rather scandalous drawings of _himself_ in them that he would rather no one else see.

The war was over but that didn’t mean that things snapped back to picture perfect right away. Far from it.

Napoleon drifted aimlessly from place to place, wherever the army sent him. He was so grief stricken that later, he wouldn’t be able to pin down exactly how he became attached to the unit he found himself in, just that when he finally started to get pieces of himself back from the overwhelming blankness of loss, he was one of a handful of young men helping return stolen and hidden art to it’s rightful places.

Well. That was what they were supposed to be doing – but any art that no one could identify, establish where it had come from or where it should go, sort of became up for grabs. Anything that wasn’t so famous it’s absence would be harshly noted, sort of vanished, got written off as another causality of the war.

Napoleon got to see a new, despicable side of people. Far from the cruelty of the war itself but still lacking a proper sense of compassion or righteousness. That was about the time he started to believe that there was no real goodness in humanity – just the dream of it.

Thomas had talked about art like it was the way to heaven – the only redeemable thing about man. He thoroughly believed it should be shared, should be taught, should be allowed to enrich people’s lives. Not squandered away for the few who could afford it.

That spark of hope and wonder and beauty inside of him was half the reason Napoleon loved him – that in the middle of all that blood and cold, he still found something redeemable in humanity. It wasn’t all some terrible power struggle played out on the backs and in the blood of young men for the glory of the old and the rich – there was more to man than violence for violence’s sake.

Napoleon had believed him, believed that ideological reality Thomas clung to. Maybe, because it gave him hope for them, hope for humanity, hope for a life after the war. Maybe, just because he loved Thomas so much he fell to the other man’s whimsy. Whatever it was, shortly after the war, it felt like the world set out specifically to prove Thomas wrong.

People were terrible. People were sharks. And there were countless of them willing to pay out the nose for pieces of art that had gone “missing” during the war and there were just as many men – men Napoleon would have previously considered _good_ – willing to procure those pieces, willing to trade those bits of history, those pieces of people’s lives, people’s cultures, for the right price.

So, it was a small piece. One he’d never seen before. It was by an artist he remembered Thomas mentioning, but not for this piece.

But, it didn’t matter. No one would be the wiser. One more missing piece. Something beautiful that reminded him of Thomas – of his storm-blue eyes and his soft smile. Something he could keep safe from being pilfered like all the rest.

He wrapped it in an old fatigue shirt and kept it near the bottom of his bag with Thomas’s notebooks.

After that, stealing art slowly became easier.

 

XxX

 

Napoleon was sure they were going to die.

For real. They were actually going to die and no one would ever find their bodies and _fine—_

He was being a _little bit_ dramatic but only a little. They were holed down under enemy fire and he was out of ammunition and Illya only had four rounds left.

It was not going well.

And he couldn’t stop thinking about all those what ifs, about Illya’s smile and Illya’s lips the few times they’d kissed. Illya’s words before he closed the door on Napoleon at Christmas.

He’d been such a fool, he realized there, trapped in the cobblestone streets, feeling helpless for the first time in ages, watching Illya’s eyes in the glow of the street lights, the set of his jaw. Taking him in, in case it was the last time he’d get to (wishing he’d had such an opportunity with Thomas).

They were saved shortly thereafter, embarrassingly enough, by a rather disgruntled MI6 agent. She had been working the case far longer than they had and was very displeased to have to blow her cover to pull the American and Russian out of danger.

She dumped them at a safe house – cursing up a storm half in English, half in Irish – before leaving them alone to go call her handler.

“Well,” Napoleon said, perusing her meager stash of alcohol – all of it cheap and off brand. The kind of stuff one drinks to get drunk, not for the appreciation of the liquor itself. He settles for a simple glass of red table wine. “That could have gone better,” he said.

Across from him, Illya grunted in assent and declined an offered glass with a shake of his head.

Napoleon sat down and took a long drink. Realized only then that his hands were shaking. He set his glass down, hoping to keep the Red Peril from noticing but Illya’s eyes were already fixated on his mutinous hands.

“Okay, Cowboy?” Illya asked.

Napoleon ran one hand across his thigh, like he could brush the jitters off but failed. “No, I suppose I’m not,” Napoleon admitted, amazed at how level his voice came out.

“Mission didn’t go well but wasn’t the worst,” Illya said dismissively.

“I thought I was going to have to watch you die,” Napoleon said. “And then die right beside you.”

Illya didn’t say anything for a moment. “We were both soldiers, Solo. It wouldn’t have been the first time you’ve watched someone die, thought you would die.”

It wasn’t a good argument, but Napoleon didn’t point that out.

“Unfortunately, it also wouldn’t be the first time I’ve watched a man I love die.”

 _“Solo,_ ” Illya cut him off, giving Napoleon a hard look. “Don’t.”

“No, Illya, listen to me--,” Napoleon started.

“No,” Illya cut him off again. “There is nothing for you to say.”

“That’s not true, Illya,” Napoleon cajoled, trying to get control over the conversation again.

But Illya wasn’t having it. He got to his feet and loomed over Napoleon, his jaw set, eyes full of angry fire. “Shut up, Napoleon. I am tired of you. You say you want me but will not have me. You reject me, humiliate me, lead me on only to reject me again,” Illya hissed. “Now you say this, tell me you love me. I won’t play your game anymore, Solo. You don’t mean it. Even if we did, tonight, you would just sleep off the adrenaline and in the morning go back to grieving your precious Thomas. And leave me where?”

They never did get to finish that argument, because at that moment, the MI6 agent rushed into the room and informed them that her safe house had been blown. They needed to leave _now_ if they didn’t want to end up in another disastrous firefight.

The next time he would be alone with Illya, it would be in a hotel room in Paris, and as soon as he opened his mouth to talk to the Russian, Illya would announce he was going out for vodka – some specific brand – and leave Napoleon standing bereft and foolish in the center of the room.

 

XxX

 

When Napoleon comes to, he’s tied to a chair. The lights are too bright for him to make anything out, at least, not with his head aching the way it is.

And for a moment, he fears the worse – that Illya is dead and buried out back and now he and Gaby are prisoners of the KGB.

But slowly the pain in his head recedes to a dull throb and the room starts to gradually slip into focus.

Gaby is not in the room, which is disconcerting on a variety of levels – one of which includes false hope – but Illya… Illya is.

Equally bound to a chair across from him, a bruised mirror image of Napoleon’s position.

He looks terrible – split lip and black eye that’s swelled completely shut and several of his fingers are clearly broken. There are bruises around his neck like someone’s been choking him and Napoleon doesn’t want to think about the things he can’t see – what wounds are festering under his clothes.

“I was wondering when you would join us, Mr. Solo,” a large, black-haired man says from where he’s sitting on a table to Napoleon’s right. He reminds Napoleon of a younger, colder version of Illya’s handler Oleg and he hates himself for not getting to Illya sooner.

“You see, the problem with torturing a KGB agent is that they’ve been taught how to resist,” the man says, sliding off the table and prowling over to Illya.

Illya looks up at him with the tinniest snarl on his face but doesn’t say anything, even when he grabs Illya by the cheeks with one hand, fingers digging into his face.

“Which is why we typically introduce loved ones to the process,” he continues. “Of course, that sometimes leads to dead civilians but it’s easier to have a few dead then a lot dead, as would happen if, say, one of our agents was selling state secrets,” he says, shaking Illya’s head before letting it go.

Illya slumps and Napoleon has to clamp down the dozen panicked feelings surging through him. He thinks briefly about Gaby’s contact; his missing fingers and dead wife.

“Of course, Illya here has no family, just ties to British and American spies, which does make him the obvious mole. And it certainly will make this next part more interesting – mostly housewives have sat in that chair before, Mr. Solo. I am excited to see how the CIA’s training holds up.”

He’s crossed back over to the table where Napoleon doesn’t have to look to know he’s got toolkit designed for nothing but eliciting pain spread out.

Napoleon tries to catch Illya’s eye, but he’s not having it for some reason.

“Normally, I would start with the girl. She would be the obvious one to break over – she’s small, delicate, less trained than you, Solo, but,” he turns around with a terrible grin on his face. “The last few days I’ve spent getting to know Illya better, it has come to light that his true affections lie with you. Did you know that, Mr. Solo?”

Illya looks up then, helpless and wounded in a way that goes beyond the physical, his mouth hung slightly open and Napoleon can see his teeth and tongue are stained in red and hates himself for not going with him to the store, for not kissing him on Christmas, for letting him spend one second out of his sight.

“Yes, I knew very well about Illya’s affections, as you so nicely put it. And I returned them, wholeheartedly.”

The man smiles, a dark, insidious thing that makes Napoleon’s gut churn. But he doesn’t show it, just holds his signature smirk and wishes what he’d said was true.

“Well then, if it turns out we’re wrong about Kuryakin, I’m sure the CIA won’t mind me having removed a homosexual from their ranks.”

Across from him, Illya pulls at his restraints for what Napoleon can only imagine must be the millionth time. The skin around his wrists are bruised, abraded and caked in dried blood.

“Leave him out of this,” Illya says in Russian, voice raw but still deep.

“No, that’s the exact reason he is a part of this,” the man says.

 

XxX

 

It had just been a flesh wound. A graze. Nothing major. He didn’t even have the medic look at it.

Still. Napoleon couldn’t stop shaking.

Thomas pulled him in close, the cold and the darkness a good enough cover for them to huddle like that.

 _You promise me, right now, Napoleon, that if I die, you keep going_.

_What? You’re not going to—_

_There’s a war on,_ he said, voice so sharp Napoleon snapped his mouth shut. _There’s a war on. I very well could. And you promise me that you will keep living. You will go Stateside and have a life. Find a job and a gal and live your life._

_Thomas—_

_Promise me. **Promise me.**_

 

XxX

 

Illya begs and cries and assures the man in both Russian and English that he is not the mole, that he has been nothing but faithful to his country.

Napoleon agrees with his statements after he spits out a mouthful of blood. He doesn’t think anything is broken yet, but it’s definitely heading that way.

The man will ask Illya what information he sold, to what entity or country he sold it, how much selling out his fellow countrymen bought him.

Illya will tell him that he didn’t, that he wouldn’t, that he was faithful, to which the man will turn and strike Napoleon – ribs or arms or face, sometimes a nasty kick to the shin with a steel-toed boot.

Napoleon will grunt, roll with the hit as much as he can, regain his breathing and come back smiling, say something sarcastic or witty like, _you hit like my sister_ or _I can do this all day_.

It’s a farce for Illya, a worthless one since Illya is not buying it because Illya is not stupid.

It goes on for sometime, until the man sighs and then leaves the room for a smoke.

“Illya,” Napoleon says the moment he hears the door close. “Are you all right?”

“I went quietly,” Illya says. “I went quietly because I thought would help, would show I’m not traitor. I would never, Napoleon, never.”

“I know,” Napoleon says, as soothingly as he could. “I know.”

“If I thought they would do this—I would not have gone quietly.”

“Don’t say things like that. We have to focus. We have to get out of here.”

“How?” Illya asks, and he sounds well and truly broken. It’s disconcerting.

But before Napoleon can come up with an answer, the house above them rocks with a nasty blast that tips his chair over and showers them both with debris.

 

XxX

 

Thomas reached across the space between them and brushed an errant hair out of Napoleon’s face.

 _Your eyes,_ he said. _I’ll never get tired of them. That splash of brown – I’ve never seen anything like it. I swear, you’re my muse. There will be paintings of you in every museum in every country till the end of time._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "zhena" is the Latin spelling for the Russian word "жена", which means wife.


	2. II.

**II.**

“It was a sovereignty issue,” Waverly is saying. Napoleon is having trouble hearing him over the _pain_ consuming the whole of his body.

“I can’t tell the KGB what to do with their own agents. Kuryakin is – _was_ —on loan. If they wanted to recall him, they had every right to do so. UNCLE is trying to maintain good relations with many different organizations. We’re not even sure how this is going to effect us just yet.”

There is a tense silence in which Napoleon pieces it together – he’s talking to Gaby and she must be glaring at him. That woman has a stare that could kill a man on a good day and kill a whole lot of men on a bad day.

“I had to wait for you two to do something stupid before I would be comfortable moving in,” Waverly says. “This way, it wasn’t me stealing Kuryakin from the KGB, it was me reclaiming my AWOL agents.”

“You could have _told_ us that!”

“I could not have told you that. That would’ve meant I sanctioned it and that would’ve been a direct attack on the KGB and that’s not really something I want to do.”

Gaby makes an exasperated, frustrated noise at Waverly. “Illya could have _died_!”

“I trusted that you two would make it there in time,” Waverly says, but he doesn’t even sound like he believes that.

“This isn’t over,” Gaby says, voice harsh. “Napoleon, stop pretending to be asleep.”

Napoleon opens his eyes with a groan. He’s in a hospital in what he can only guess is in London, with Waverly and Gaby standing over his bed. Waverly looks supremely sheepish – a look Napoleon has never seen him give off before – and Gaby is in one piece but has several bruises and bandaged cuts along her face and arms.

“You came in here to argue specifically to wake me up?” Napoleon asks.

“Yes, you’ve been asleep for two days. You can’t laze around forever,” Gaby says.

Napoleon gives a tiny laugh, discovers how much that hurts to do and stops, before turning his head slowly to take in the rest of the room and finds it void of other beds or occupants. His stomach knots at the implications of that.

“Where’s Peril?” he asks.

“Across the hall,” Gaby says. “Worse condition than you, but all right. Three broken fingers, two broken ribs, concussion, countless cuts and bruises. He had fluid in his lungs, too. They’re trying to stop him from getting pneumonia. He’s going to be okay, Napoleon.”

Napoleon sinks back onto his pillow. “Good. Hate to have gone through all that for him to die on us.”

“Seems like your sense of humor needs some time to recover too,” Waverly says. “I’m sure it goes without saying you’re all off duty for the foreseeable future. And I wanted to say,” Waverly continues, suddenly quite serious. “That I am sorry for all this.”

Napoleon gives him a tiny, forced grin and waves the least injured of his hands through the air. “International politics. Gets the better of us all sometimes.”

“Yes, so it would seem,” Waverly agrees. “I wish you a speedy recovery,” he bids him before leaving.

Gaby waits for the door to close before turning to Napoleon. “If you want to see him, I could find you a wheelchair.”

 

XxX

 

Someone has washed and shaved Illya since Napoleon last saw him. That alone makes him look better but he still doesn’t look _well._ Pale white, practically fading into the sheets in the spots that aren’t bruised and his breathing a bit labored.

“They’re keeping him under, just for a little while,” Gaby explains as Napoleon reaches out to take his hand before remembering his broken fingers and grabbing his wrist instead.

He feels the corded muscle under his palms. Illya’s skin surprisingly soft, in spite of everything and Napoleon has never been more grateful in his life.

But, still. It’s no good. In his mind’s eye, Thomas is turning in his grave, restless in death and surely angry that Napoleon didn’t keep his promise to love no one but him.

 

XxX

 

At first, they make no mention of the incident. The two set their minds on getting better without talking about what laid them low.

Every day, Napoleon wheels himself across the hall and he and Illya play chess. He helps Illya learn French and Illya fills in the gaps in his Russia.

As soon as he can walk without feeling like his chest is a bunch of rattling puzzle pieces, he’s discharged. He still comes every day and sits next to Illya. He continues to lose chess matches to him but Russian starts to make more sense and Illya is reading _The Count of Monte Christo_ in the original French.

Sometimes they just sit in companionable silence for hours, reading or not. Illya sleeping long hours, always turning to make sure Napoleon is still there when he wakes, watching the American with careful but gentle eyes. Napoleon catches himself smiling at Illya for no reason other than the fact that he is alive and awake. Illya smiles back.

For the first time since Thomas told him that he was his muse, Napoleon feels hope. Feels like the world isn’t going to give out at the edges with the slightest push.

Which is why Napoleon stops going to visit Illya in the hospital.

 

XxX

 

“One of these days I’m going to ask Waverly to give me a partner who is competent,” Gaby says.

Napoleon nearly drops his coffee cup, instead, sloshing it everywhere with a start.

“Graceful,” Gaby appraises.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

“Trying to figure out what Illya did to make you start ignoring him,” Gaby says. She’s leaning against the doorway with her arms crossed, clearly sick of Napoleon.

Napoleon sets his cup down, wipes the coffee off his hand with a dishtowel. “I’m not _ignoring_ him,” he says, sharply. “I am giving him space to heal. So he can come home, so we can start work again.”

Gaby rolls her eyes at him. “Are you expecting anyone to buy that lie?”

“It’s not a lie,” Napoleon insists, dumping his cup out and depositing it in the sink.

“You’re such a fool,” she says, stomping out.

 

XxX

 

“Cowboy,” Illya says when Napoleon comes into his room. He’s sitting up, a tiny smile threatening at the edge of his lips. The bruising on his face has cleared up to a yellowed parchment sort of color. His ribs are healing, his hands are well on their way and they’re talking about releasing him soon.

“You finally come back to make sure I’m not dead?” Illya asks and Napoleon knows he’s kidding but his stomach drops out nonetheless.

“Something like that,” he says. But then takes a breath and tries again. “Waverly has set up a safe house for us to recuperate in. I suppose I wanted to make sure you wanted to come home with me when you were released.”

Illya looks at him in puzzlement. “Why would I go anywhere else?”

“You might not want to put up with me. You might want a place of your own.”

Illya shook his head, grinning. “Cowboy, I don’t want to go _anywhere_ alone for a long time. Look at what going out alone got me.”

“Hard to argue with that.”

 

XxX

 

Napoleon puts the house together methodically. Waverly even gives him a budget in which to do so – which Napoleon supposes is an extension of the original apology he’d given them in the hospital.

Waverly has moved Gaby into the house directly behind theirs – so all they have to do is cross the garden to reach one another.

Napoleon practices clearing all the rooms in both houses. Gaby and he collectively decide where to hide weapons and booby-traps, come up with new code words and meeting places should the worst happen.

He picks out the furniture – sturdy but understated, dark woods. The bedding – soft, cotton sheets with high thread counts and fluffy duvets with a choice of covers.

Puts framed knock-offs of some of his favorite pieces on the wall. Fills a bookshelf with books he remembers seeing Illya read over the years, and also sets out a hand-carved chess set on the coffee table.

The house comes together nicely.

All that is missing is Illya.

 

XxX

 

He comes home four weeks after he was taken.

He’s still got a bit of a limp from a cracked shinbone, but his lungs are clear, his ribs are almost fully healed and his hands are also coming along nicely.

The doctors assured them both that Illya would make a full recovery.

Waverly drops by with paperwork – Illya is to become a naturalized, British citizen.

The KGB found the mole but they’re still not exactly thrilled with Illya and have cut all ties. He officially only works for UNCLE.

(Which means the next time he gets kidnapped – they can go after him without all the slight of hand. But, Napoleon is hoping there won’t be a next time. In fact, he’s not sure he’s ever going to let Illya out of his sight again.)

Napoleon sets him up in the living room, spends twenty minutes trying not to fret over him before giving up and fretting over him full-speed.

Illya laughs when Napoleon brings him a cup of tea (English Breakfast, two sugars no cream) and fluffs the pillow next to him.

“Cowboy, I am all right,” Illya says, fondly.

Napoleon knows that – can see Illya sitting right there with the last of the bruise on his face almost completely faded away – but he wants to put his hands on him. Wants to feel his warmth and his pulse and his breath and _know_ that he’s alive, vibrantly so.

But he won’t.

Because… Because things haven’t _changed_.

Thomas is still dead and Illya—Illya was almost wiped off the fucking map. It feels like asking too much of him, to be here, now, with Illya and the atmosphere is charged with all the history between them, tense with two failed kiss and several incidents of hospitalized-hand-holding neither one has acknowledged as being either platonic or not.

But Napoleon is the same man he was before Illya went missing, namely, a dead artist’s muse, and the near-death experience of this Russian asshole wasn’t about to change that status in the least.

 

XxX

 

Napoleon cooks them dinner and Gaby joins them. They make lighthearted conversation about music, local politics, the neighborhood Waverly has based them out of.

It is terribly, painfully domestic.

(Napoleon secretly loves it. Tucks the moment away like a postcard, so he can revisit it later, on a rainy day.)

Illya doesn’t eat a lot – can’t or won’t (Napoleon thinks the former) – but he does keep sparing Napoleon glances over the table.

For a spy, he’s not being very subtle because it takes no time at all for Gaby to catch on and raise an eyebrow.

No one says anything about it out loud though and, as long as that’s the case, Napoleon thinks he’s safe. It’s subverted and subtext. As long as it stays that way, he can live like this.

After dinner, Gaby hangs around a little longer. Plays a game of chess with Illya while Napoleon does the dishes. Puts on a record, has a glass of wine. Napoleon listens to them make small talk from the kitchen. He can hear the relief still in Gaby’s voice that Illya is alive and on his way to well.

For a moment, he wants to stay there and wish his love for Illya onto Gaby, wish Illya’s feelings for him onto her too.

Then he could just go back to his room, to his notebooks full of Thomas’s drawings and pretend it’s been a mistake, a dream, a misunderstanding.

But after Gaby finally calls it a night, Napoleon emerges from the kitchen and announces he’s headed to bed.

“Not a bad idea,” Illya says from where he’s slumped, slightly pale, on the couch. He’s waning under the length of the day, still a bit off from fully recovered.

Napoleon hovers for a moment, asks him if he needs help getting up or—anything else. He’s never been the best at times like this, but, thankfully, Illya waves him off.

He goes about his typical evening routine before finally turning off the light and slipping down into the covers with a sigh.

It’s just as he’s sunk down into that lovely space between completely asleep and fully awake that the cover’s rustle and the bed shifts and he turns lazily on his side to find Illya has snuck into his room and laid down beside him.

He wrenches himself upright, flipping on the bedside lamp, glowering at Illya.

The Russian just throws an arm over his eyes in displeasure and mutters, “Turn the light off, Cowboy.”

“What are you doing?” Napoleon hisses – alarmed at himself for the harshness in his voice.

Illya slides his arm off his face to look at Napoleon. His expression stuck somewhere between bewildered, angry and hurt, a line between his eyebrows, lips set but eyes strangely soft.

“You won’t let me sleep with you?” Illya asks.

“ _No,_ ” Napoleon growls.

Illya takes a moment to process this, his face growing harder and more closed off as he does, then he quietly sits up, slips out of the bed and shuts the bedroom door behind him with a gentle click.

Napoleon sits there in the silence, shell-shocked, for several moments before turning the lamp off and lying back down.

He stares at the shadows on the ceiling for hours before sleep comes.

 

XxX

 

The morning is the worst he’s had in a while.

It doesn’t start out that way. He wakes and feels hung over even though he didn’t drink the night before. He knows it’s more emotional than anything – turning down his injured partner is still resonating with him quite badly. Like the way his ears ring sometimes after eating a nasty hit to the head.

Life, like fighting, is really about moving forward and staying on your feet.

So he resolves to talk to Illya and make it clear that they are partners and they are friends and he would die for the man, but they are not, nor will they ever be, lovers.

Because he can’t do it. He won’t survive if he loses Illya, and it’ll only be tenfold if Illya is his lover when he, inevitably, vanishes.

But first, he figures, coffee and breakfast are in order. Nothing complicated – Illya seems to be slightly disinclined to food – but Napoleon still makes him toast, bacon, eggs and coffee. Decides to bring them to him in bed.

He balances a plate in one hand and knocks with the other.

“Peril, you awake yet?” he asks.

There is no response so he knocks again.

And again, no response.

“Illya?” he asks to the door. “You can’t be that mad. Open up,” he demands, now a bit annoyed.

Still, Illya does not open the door.

“Okay, so you want privacy. At least let me know you’re _alive_ ,” Napoleon asks, his heart starting to pick up pace.

When that garners no response, he tries the door and it’s not even locked. It swings open in front of him and reveals Illya’s empty bedroom.

Napoleon doesn’t drop the plate – because a mess of breakfast food would be a hindrance in a fistfight – but he barely manages to put it down on the coffee table before grabbing one of his pistols and clearing the house.

There is no sign of forced entry, no sign of foul play, none of their belongings are awry, but, most notably, there is no Illya and no hint of where he’s gone off to.

Napoleon probably looks ridiculous running across his garden in his robe with his gun held low, but he should’ve known – _Waverly_ should have known – that it wouldn’t be that easy. That the KGB wouldn’t let Illya go so easily, wouldn’t let _their best agent_ become a citizen of another country and stand idly by.

Only this time, Napoleon realizes, they’ll kill him. And they won’t wait, either. Hell, he could all ready be dead – Napoleon has no idea how long he’s been missing this time. They would’ve wanted to take him somewhere with no witnesses to overhear the shot. Somewhere they could dispose of his body quickly and easily.

Napoleon almost retches over his shoes, barely manages to hold it down as he realizes he should’ve let Illya stay. It’s not like he hasn’t shared sleeping arrangements with other soldiers or agents in non-sexual contexts out of necessity before. At least then, he could’ve given Illya fighting chance – or died with him.

He makes it to Gaby’s back door and yanks it open a little harder than he meant. He takes a breath and slips inside. He makes his way through the kitchen of her little townhouse, checking the corners as he goes and then pushes open the door to the sitting room, stepping in silently, looking first to the corners and then to the couch—

Where a rather tired and displeased Gaby is sitting with Illya sprawled out and asleep on her. His long body takes up the length of the couch, his head, however, is resting in her lap with her fingers occasionally raking through his hair.

She’s wearing a white pair of pajamas, her hair mussed and face bare and she looks, well, rather pissed.

And tired.

It takes Napoleon no time at all to realize she’s pissed at _him_ and not Illya.

The glare on her face makes it very clear that she _will_ kill him if he wakes the Russian up on purpose or accident, but also that they _will_ be having a _conversation_ about this later.

Napoleon has never looked forward to something less in his life.

 

XxX

 

There are lots of things Napoleon Solo is good at. He’s good at stealing, at wooing women, at fighting, at appraising art, at avoiding people, at procrastinating. The latter of which he is particularly good at because there is one thing Napoleon Solo is terrible at: confirmation with people he actually likes.

So instead of waiting around for Illya to wake up and Gaby to chew him out, he gets properly dressed and leaves the house.

London is beautiful in the fall. Well, it’s beautiful damn near all the time, but it feels good to wander, makes him think back at when he first joined the war effort and his first stop was London. He likes to see how it’s grown and changed and put itself back together.

Likes knowing that they won. That all those lives lost were not in vain. It makes him think that he was somebody before all this. Young and idealistic and serving his country – not for any personal gain, but because it was the right thing to do.

He’s not that person anymore. He’s not sure he wants to be that person anymore. And, despite his rough demeanor and his propensity for destroying hotel rooms – Illya _is_ a good person. Someone with a calling, with a belief, with a loyalty for loyalty’s sake. Which is what makes Napoleon not good enough for him. He would just taint him with his soiled hands, his soiled heart, his soiled nature.

Though it feels good to walk the streets of London and remember, he’s no fool either. He’ll have to go home and face Gaby eventually.

And so he does.

 

XxX

 

Illya is asleep again when he gets back. Napping in his own room. The door is open and Napoleon can see his prone figure under the dark blue blanket.

Gaby is put together, subtle makeup and her hair braided. She looks less tired but no less annoyed, sitting on the couch in his living room where she can see straight into Illya’s room. A rush of guilt runs through him and he has the decency to at least look sheepish.

Gaby looks over Illya’s sleeping form and then pins Napoleon with her stare.

“The last time he was alone, he was kidnapped by the very people he swore his life over to,” she says, very simply, keeping her voice low so not to wake the Russian. “You’ll have to forgive him if he’s not too keen on being by himself just yet.”

“I’m sorry,” Napoleon says.

“As you should be,” Gaby replies. It’s not a jab, not really, just an acknowledgement of the facts as they are.

There is a tense moment of silence between them in which Napoleon cannot, for the life of him, think of what to say next.

Gaby sucks her cheek in and then lets it out with a slow breath. “What happened between you two?” she asks, less angrily than before.

And that—that’s the million-dollar question and Napoleon does not want to answer it.

So he doesn’t.

But the silence that settles between them and only serves to revitalize Gaby’s frustration.

“You risk your life and mine to save him and now you’re going to ignore him for what? What, Napoleon? Was this just your yearly good deed?” she asks.

Napoleon opens his mouth to say something but can’t figure out what he could say to make sense of his behavior to her. So he shuts his mouth again with a tiny, huffing noise.

“I’m going out. You,” she says standing up and pointing at Napoleon like he needs the clarification. “Stay here in case he needs you. And if he does, be nice. Understood?”

Napoleon nods, a little bit afraid she might hit him.

Instead she just shakes her head and leaves, muttering curses about him in German as she goes.

Napoleon slumps onto the couch and watches Illya sleep.

 

XxX

 

Gaby doesn’t appear for dinner.

Napoleon cooks again. Illya gets up, putters around. Plays himself in a game of chess. Skims through a few books. Sits slightly restlessly on the couch and doesn’t speak to Napoleon but gives him a tiny, self-deprecating smile.

They eat in silence and after dinner, Illya insists on doing the dishes – says he wants to feel useful and Napoleon doesn’t argue with him. Instead gets comfortable on the couch again and sips a glass of whiskey.

Later, he finds Illya standing awkwardly at the back door, looking out across the garden at Gaby’s house.

None of the lights are on inside and Napoleon isn’t sure she’s home. It’s not hard to figure out what Illya wants.

Napoleon clears his throat so Illya looks at him, “Come on,” he says.

Illya follows him – lost puppy – up the stairs and back to his bedroom where Napoleon motions for him to lie down.

“Leave the door open,” Napoleon says. “I’ll sleep on the couch. If you need anything, I’ll be right there,” he says, pointing. There’s a direct line of sight between Illya’s bed and the couch.

Illya nods. There’s something broken in the way he watches Napoleon leave but Napoleon decides not to think to hard about it – he hasn’t changed his mind.

And he hasn’t forgotten Illya’s chastisement either.

 

XxX

 

The sofa really isn’t meant to be slept on by a man of Napoleon’s size. He has to put his feet up on the armrest and his shoulders are almost too broad to fit comfortably across the cushions.

Still. He manages. Because every time he turns his head to the right he can see Illya swaddled in blankets and moonlight and real and alive and right _there._

Belatedly, he realizes he could have Illya even closer. In his bed, or he could be in Illya’s. Could have him snugged right up against his side or in his arms and slept all the better for knowing that the Russian is okay, that they got him out, that he never has to answer to handlers who thought he was a mole again.

Still, as he drifts off, he thinks of sleeping on the rocky ground in that place where he couldn’t tell if they were in France or had crossed into Germany and Thomas showed him how to arrange his blankets to keep him warm while they slept out in the open.

He feels like that again: on rocky ground.

 

XxX

 

Several days go by like that. Gaby comes by often, spends hours gently talking with Illya while Napoleon finds chores to do and pretends he’s not listening.

He cooks. Illya accuses him of trying to fatten him up but Napoleon just shrugs and makes some sarcastic remark about the availability of food in Russia.

It’s the wrong thing to say. Illya sits quiet and still after, staring at some spot in the middle distance.

When Gaby comes over, Napoleon goes for a walk.

At night, he sleeps on the couch, where Illya can see him.

Sometimes Illya wakes up with a start, sits up in the dark and scares Napoleon as much as he scares himself. Most of the time, he calms himself down and goes right back to sleep.

Sometimes, he can’t calm down and Napoleon goes to him, sits on the edge of his bed and rubs his shoulder, tells him that he’s in London, tells him the date, tells him that he’s inside an UNCLE safe house and there’s a gun in the bedside table and that everything is going to be okay. That Napoleon is not going to let anything happen to him ever again.

The third time this happens, Illya sinks back into his pillow, turns onto his side and buries his face in Napoleon’s hip and cries.

It’s alarming in a way that Napoleon doesn’t know how to deal with. The only other time he saw Illya cry was when they were both being tortured. He clings onto the material of Napoleon’s pajamas and says, “Please, Napoleon.”

Napoleon hushes him and alternates between rubbing his shoulder and gently running his hand through Illya’s hair till he quiets and goes back to sleep.

He sits there in the muted starlight watching the Russian slumber for some time, then returns to his spot on the couch and falls asleep quickly.

He dreams about Illya and Thomas. He dreams they are playing chess and neither one is winning.

Every move, Thomas starts to decay. First his skin goes waxy and shallow, then the bones of his fingertips appear, his eyes turn milky white and his teeth a terrible yellow.

Across from him, Illya grows old slowly. Alive, yes, but aging. Crows feet around his eyes, his lovely golden hair dulling and fading to gray.

Somewhere in the game, they gridlock each other and Illya looks up and asks, “Is this what you wanted?”

 

XxX

 

Illya is fit enough to work out again. He hasn’t really grown soft, just stiff and sore.

He jogs with Gaby in the morning and accompanies Napoleon to a dingy gym he discovered several blocks away. He starts to look like his old self – plus a few new scars – and Napoleon knows it’s just a matter of time before Waverly puts them back in the field.

It’ll be good for Illya, he knows. Napoleon is less sure about himself. Less sure that he’ll be able to focus as single-mindedly on a mission as he used to. Less sure he’ll be able to go anywhere without knowing Illya’s exact whereabouts at all time.

It’s not a conducive mentality to have as a spy. He doesn’t know how to fix it.

 

XxX

 

It all comes to a head the day he returns home from grocery shopping and Illya is not there.

He’s left a note that simply says, _be back later_ in his terrible scrawl. It make Napoleon’s stomach twist up into knots but he has no reason to expect foul play and, besides, he’ll need to be able to be apart from Illya eventually. It’s not sustainable for him to expect to spend every moment looking after the guy.

He’s not out too long, is home within the hour, taking his hat and jacket off.

“Have a nice…whatever?” Napoleon asks, reading that days newspaper at the kitchen table. He’s trying to look smooth and not succeeding. He can tell Illya sees right through him, but the Russian says nothing.

“I had meeting with Waverly,” Illya says.

“Is that so? Going back out in the field?”

“Soon,” Illya replies.

Napoleon tramps down all the negative feelings that run through him at that statement.

“Well, congratulations are in order, I suppose?” he says.

“Cowboy,” Illya says, his voice unexpectedly somber.

Napoleon drops the fake smile he had put on.

“I’ve asked Waverly to let me work alone from now on,” he says. “I work better alone.”

A cold shiver – like someone dropped ice water all over him – crawls across Napoleon’s skin.

“And he agreed to that?” Napoleon asks.

Illya shrugs. “Said he would think about it.”

Napoleon doesn’t mean to sigh with relief but does nevertheless. There’s a chance Waverly will see them as too valuable together.

Unless…

Unless Illya went in there and told him the _truth_ – that he made advances toward Napoleon and that Napoleon rejected him and how could they be expected to work together now?

Napoleon goes for bravado instead of something constructive, goes for something borderline mean instead of supportive. He gives Illya his best smile and says, “You’d miss me.”

Illya gives him the same look he did before he flipped the table in Berlin. A stony, destructive sort of glare.

“Would you care if I did?” Illya asks.

Napoleon stops smiling immediately. “Yes,” he says. “I would,” Napoleon starts, can’t believe he saying this. “I would miss you as well. You’re invaluable to me, Illya.”

Illya considers him a moment. “What are you doing, Cowboy?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you want me, you only had to say.”

“I know.”

“So you don’t? Want me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Napoleon,” Illya says, exasperated. Tired. Frustrated. His hands are shaking. He’s going to tear the room apart, or possibly even Napoleon.

Napoleon wants him too, almost. Wants to be pulled apart, thinks it would be easier than living like this. To just let Illya kill him.

“I want you, Peril. Since the café in Berlin. You went missing and I… I didn’t know what I would do if we didn’t get you back,” he says.

Illya seems to soften – just a little. So subtly that Napoleon is sure he only notices because he’s spent so much time with the Russian.

“But that’s why we can’t be together,” he says.

And just like that, Illya goes back to stone, hardens again, moves a step back from Napoleon.

“I couldn’t handle losing another lover. I’ve been there, Peril. I don’t want to do it again. Men like us? A field like this? You know we’ll both die bloody sooner or later.”

Illya nods, jaw tense. “You don’t want me because of what might happen in the future,” he surmises sharply.

“Come on,” Napoleon says. “You must agree with me. Who do you know who has retired from this life? We go until we’re put down and then some fresh recruit takes our place.”

“Fine, Solo. As you wish,” he says and closes himself in his room.

 

XxX

 

Gaby and Illya go out to dinner without him and he absolutely does not sulk around the house.

When they return, for the first time since he’s been back, Illya sleeps with the door to his room closed.

Napoleon wonders if Illya would view him as desperate if he continues to sleep on the couch in spite of the clear message of the closed door. He ultimately decides he doesn’t care and sleeps on the couch anyways.

(When he wakes in the middle of the night to relieve himself, the door to Illya’s room is open and he’s sound asleep, curled around his pillow like it’s a person. Napoleon has to stop himself from staring.)

 

XxX

 

Waverly asks Napoleon if he wants to work alone and Napoleon isn’t sure what to say, so instead he says something vague and noncommittal that could be taken either way. Waverly dismisses him saying that they’ll all be back in the field the following week.

He tries to feel happy about it. It’ll be good to work again, feel useful. He was starting to climb the walls. But he hates not knowing if he’ll still be partnered with Illya.

And if he’s not, will Illya move out of the safe house? Get his own place, somewhere else? Will their paths ever cross again?

 

XxX

 

When he returns home, Illya is not there.

He has also not left a note.

But nothing is upended or shattered. All the doors are closed and the windows locked and so Napoleon makes himself not worry. There is no logical reason to believe that anything has happened to the Red Peril so he forces himself to behave rationally and not get hung up on Illya’s absence in the house.

It is a difficult task but he manages. Besides, he realizes, he’ll have to get used to it soon anyways.

He wonders if Illya will ask for a different safe house. Or if he’ll keep this one but they’ll just miss each other, only home when the other is not. Ships in the night. If, the few opportunities he gets to come back here, it’ll just be like living with a ghost – a presence felt but not really seen or known.

He pours himself a glass of scotch and absolutely does not sulk on the couch.

 

XxX

 

Illya shakes him awake. The Russian is sitting on the coffee table with a package between his feet, looking overly large and ridiculous with the awkwardness of his sprawl and the closeness of his proximity.

Napoleon rubs at his eyes and sleepily asks, “What time is it?”

“Seven o’clock,” Illya says. “You sleep all day? You wrinkled your suit.”

Napoleon looks down at himself; he is disheveled, silk tie creased up and his blue shirt and suit equally unkempt. “Must’ve just fallen asleep,” he says, sitting up.

Illya smiles at him, this strangely warm, slightly timid thing. He’s very close, their knees are almost touching as Napoleon rubs the sleep from his eyes with the heel of his palm.

“I’ve been thinking,” Illya says.

“Hm?” Napoleon mutters.

“No, let me start over,” Illya says.

Napoleon finishes rubbing his face and looks at his partner.

Illya reaches into the package between his feet and pulls out a bottle of wine. Red. Old. Expensive. He turns it towards Napoleon.

“Good wine, yes?” he asks.

Napoleon can feel the start of a trap stretching out before him. He appraises the bottle, the year, the contents, country of origin, but he can’t figure out what Illya is getting at just yet.

Then he nods, slowly, “Very good wine. Expensive,” he says warily.

“Gift,” Illya says, almost tenderly. “For you, Cowboy.”

This is, easily, the oddest trap that’s ever been laid before Napoleon. Which – he tells himself – is the only reason he deliberately walks right into it.

“Very kind of you,” he replies, voice deliberately flat. “May I ask why?”

“Courting gift,” Illya says.

Napoleon chokes on air for a moment and when he manages to cough it out, Illya is still sitting there, smug smile on his face.

“Courting gift?” he repeats, dumbfounded.

“I know, two men, illegal. Frowned upon. Sin, whatnot,” Illya says with a dismissive wave of his hand and Napoleon has to stamp down another sudden wave of disbelief. “I do not care,” Illya says. “I love you, Napoleon Solo.”

It washes through him, hot and cold and horrifying and feels slick like Thomas’s blood in his hands, on his clothes, forming rivers in the cobblestone cracks.

“Illya,” Napoleon says, defeated. “We can’t. _I--,_ ” his voice cracks. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” Illya asks, not angry, not yet, but close, close, and it feels like he’s leading Napoleon down a path, further into the trap.

“What happens if you die? If I die? If you get hurt? What if you get taken again? What if I can’t save you a second time?”

“Will you love me less if I am merely your partner? Your friend? You do love me, Napoleon. I see it. Will losing me hurt less if I am not your lover when I go?”

A tiny, wounded sob escapes from Napoleon, like he’s eaten a hit. “Yes, Illya, I love you, have loved you, will love you. But--,”

“No,” Illya cuts him off. “Don’t tell me why not.”

“ _But_ ,” Napoleon presses on. “I won’t survive it. Not again. When you get hurt, and I’m left behind. The KGB wants you dead, Illya. They find you and they _will_ kill you. Every week, a new mission, a new man tries to kill you. We go around the world racking up enemies like pool balls and I won’t survive it if I lose you.”

“Will it hurt less to lose your partner?”

Illya has a point but Napoleon doesn’t want to face it.

“I can’t do it to _you_ , Illya,” he says, instead, trying to derail. “I know what it feels like – to love and to lose and I don’t want you to have this… this wound, walking around like a living corpse with half your heart, barely enough to pump blood.”

Illya doesn’t respond to that, instead motions to the bottle of wine in Napoleon’s hand.

“Will you drink it?” Illya asks. “The wine?”

Napoleon falters slightly over the sudden change in subject. Looks down at the bottle again and answers, “Yes? I suppose if you gave me a bottle of wine – especially one this nice – it would be a shame not to drink it.”

“But if you drink it,” Illya says. “It will be gone.”

“That’s typically how that works, yes,” Napoleon agrees, knowing the trap is rising up around him even though he can’t make sense of it just yet.

“So you don’t deny yourself good thing because it ends,” Illya says, snapping the trap shut. “Future absence of something not good enough reason to not partake in the present.”

Napoleon’s first reaction is anger. “You’re not a bottle of wine, Illya!”

“I know,” the Russian says. “Would it hurt to lose me now?” he asks. “As things are, just partners, just friends?”

Deflated, caught in the snare, Napoleon answers, “Yes.”

“And Thomas – would you,” Illya clears his throat and looks a little sorry that he’s about open the wound again. “Would you give up what you had if you knew what would happen?”

Napoleon stares down at his palms, loveline, lifeline, older than they were when they held Thomas. The same hands that held guns and women and took lives and stole art.

What would Thomas think of him now.

“No,” he says, without meeting Illya’s eye. “I would never give him up.”

Illya leans forward then, grabbing Napoleon’s hand with his, his fingers long and warm and slotting over the bones in the back of his hand, Illya’s other hand landing on Napoleon’s knee.

“So, you don’t want to be with me, tell me it’s because you don’t want to be with _me_ ,” Illya says.

It’s the perfect argument. Napoleon has to give him due credit: he knows how to lay the bait, trap a mark. He’s got Napoleon cornered and there’s really no way out.

He meets Illya’s eye, feels the moment as heavy as it is, do or die like he has his finger on the trigger and they’re both hanging in the balance.

“I can’t say that,” he says. “Because I want you. You know that, Peril.”

The edges of a hopeful smile creep across Illya’s face. “Then it’s decided. Be with me, Napoleon.”

It’s hard to tell him no again, but, more importantly, Napoleon doesn’t _want_ to tell him no again. He’s tired and worn down and lonely. And the Russian is right, acting like he would love Illya any less as just his partner, or that a romantic relationship with him wouldn’t be worthwhile if he died or disappeared, was a fruitless endeavor to begin with.

He wishes he’d been less pig headed to see that from the start, however.

He squeezes Illya’s hand, stands on the edge of the precipice between the man who could love Illya and the man who swore to only love Thomas and choses a side.

For the first time ever, he leans in and kisses Illya.

It’s soft and gentle and disarmingly sweet.

Illya does not push him, does not lean into him too much, just takes what he’s given and gives back just as much.

It’s a layer of perfection Napoleon never thought possible. And he finds himself unable to believe that love can happen twice like that: big and bright and all consuming and yet quiet in it’s presentation, slipping in like water slowing rising. Just a momentary lapse to notice it was there all along.

 


	3. III.

**III.**

Arlington is far lovelier than Napoleon had anticipated. It’s almost overwhelming. The leaves have changed to red and gold; it’s quiet and peaceful and there’s a perfect crisp of autumn cold in the air.

Illya made him come. Well, made is a strong word, but he never would’ve come on his own.

Illya stands back, hands in his pockets and gaze obscured by sunglasses while Napoleon gets the guts to approach the grave.

He’s brought carnations in every color he could find. An overwhelming bouquet of them, because that’s what he loved most about Thomas – him being a brilliant source of hope and color in the drab world of the war.

It takes him a moment to leave Illya’s side and lay the flowers on the grave. He’s not a religious man – he doesn’t believe in God or souls – so he’s not sure he should talk to this slab of stone and the body beneath. Not sure what he would say. There’s so much to say and nothing to say all at once.

There’s a lump in his throat and his mouth is dry as he reaches out to put his hand on the name – tracing the T down the center and feels his heart both swell and break.

Finds himself saying, “The world has no idea what it’s missing.”

He stays there, crouched on the grass in his best suit, hand splayed out over Thomas’s name for several more moments.

“You wouldn’t like the man I turned into,” he says. “But I wouldn’t have turned into him if you had been here. I don’t… I don’t blame you. Not anymore.”

For a moment, he finds himself waiting for a response. Like he was capable of loving Thomas out of the veil of death and back to life.

When he catches himself feeling that way, his heart sinks right down again and he realizes that loss, like love, is inherently endless. It started before he realized and will continue long after he can imagine. The whole contraption is one infinite Mobius strip that bleeds and bends back into itself at every curve. A massive, inescapable mark on his life.

And it’s both a blessing and a curse to have it twice. That Illya sees this damage and the way love can tear a soul apart and still wants it – with _Napoleon_ nevertheless.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying till Illya’s hand lands on his shoulder, massaging gently at the edge of his neck.

He stays there a long time and mourns. Not just Thomas, but the boy he was when he loved Thomas, the life he could’ve had if Thomas hadn’t died, the man he never was, and all the time he spent refusing Illya.

He can’t help but think about how they are interconnected – the way Thomas’s death not only lead him to Illya, but changed him into the man that Illya loves; how there are blessings hidden in the darkest curses, how knowledge of the end was not reason enough to deny the pathway to it.

How endings sometimes put you right where you need to be to start over.


	4. Epilogue

They continue living in the safe house in London together. Gaby stays in the house behind theirs. She comes over often, seemingly just to give Napoleon a hard time – she is overly critical of his cooking (even though she eats it), his clothing, and even the layout of the house at times. She plays chess with Illya (occasionally even wins) and sometimes drags along an errant, unlucky suitor who Illya and Napoleon are far too happy to vet for her. (So far, none have been good enough for their Gaby, but Napoleon is not sure anyone ever could be.)

Illya amends his choice to work alone with Waverly – only to get a slightly annoying smile that reeks of an _I thought so_ that Waverly is too professional to actually voice. The trio continue working together, maintaining their position as one of U.N.C.L.E.’s most effective units. The camaraderie between them is easier than Napoleon ever could have hoped for.

Napoleon moves his essentials into Illya’s room and spends all of the nights they’re home there. He leaves most of his belongings in the other bedroom to keep their relationship hidden from prying eyes. Illya grumbles a little, but really, the closet in his bedroom wasn’t large enough for all of Napoleon’s suits anyways.

Thomas’s notebooks live in the top drawer of the table next to Napoleon’s side of the bed – the side furthest from the door but closest to the window. He doesn’t look at them every night, but close to. Sometimes on his own, sometimes with Illya sprawled out on his chest, taking in the pictures with him. It feels good to share that with someone, finally, to let someone see how talented Thomas was, how much he was loved, how much Napoleon was loved in return.

There are sketches of Napoleon in one of the notebooks – some chaste and sweet, some outlined dark and harsh against the grim backdrop of war, and some far from modest. Most of the latter are purely fabrications of Thomas’s imagination (there was only so much privacy at war) but there is still a certain fondness in the way Illya looks them over. Like he’s somehow jealous and not at the same time. He says he likes seeing his lover from that different perspective, and Napoleon would believe him, but Illya is always a bit extra greedy in bed after he’s been pressed on the matter. But that’s all right. There’s room enough in their lives for all the complications those many emotions breed.

They manage to strike balance with each other – between the fears of losing one another and the frustrations of living with each other, the places their personalities mesh or grate. There’s a harmony to them that feels like it might’ve been there all along, thrumming under the surface, waiting to be uncovered. Like they both knew the steps and were merely waiting for the song to come around again.

They make love at a slightly higher ratio than they fight; spend more time in hotels, feigning relationships with marks, assets or Gaby than they do at home with each other and yet never run out of reasons to bother each other or kiss each other. The balance feels natural and lighthearted. The way their lives should have been all along.

Every year, when possible, they celebrate Christmas in New York, but New Years in London with Gaby. Illya turns out to be a bit more of a hopeless sentimentalist than Napoleon anticipated, and he never forgets their anniversary – no matter where in the world they are.

But, perhaps even more sentimental than that, every fall, he takes Napoleon back to the States, back to Arlington, back to Thomas’s grave.

Every year, Napoleon brings flowers to the grave and doesn’t know what to say, feels foolish for wanting to say something at all. Until one year he just starts talking. He tells Thomas everything. That he became an art thief, that he got pressured into the CIA, into UNCLE. That he fell in love with someone else and denied it for too long.

That it worked out, in the end – it only took a kidnapping and a harrowing rescue to get them to a place they could be together. But it worked out.

That he’s happy, in spite of everything, he’s happy.

It’s far more than he ever expected out of life.

**Author's Note:**

> Heaven forbid I not name a story after after a song lyric, the title is taken from Bon Iver's song, "The Wolves (Act I & II)"


End file.
